By Aida Toro –

Tan Lin, associate Professor of English at NJCU, earned a $25,000 grant from the “Grants to Artists” program of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Professor Lin has a variety of plans for the $25,000 grant.

A total of 50 candidates were nominated and 15 candidates were in for poetry. According to Stacy Stark, Executive Director of the foundation, Lin was selected for the grant due to his “artistic excellence and groundbreaking work.”

“I’m just taking a leave so I can work on a novel, buy some books, a good computer, a little bit more of Chinese takeout, and take some time off ,” said Lin.

Lin has won many awards, starting from Capital Arts Writing Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation to having an honorable mention with a Pushcart Prize for fiction writing. The courses he teaches are: Creative Writing, Creative Non-Fiction, Persuasive Writing, and many more.

The novel Lin is currently working on is called Our Feelings Were Made By Hand, which is a sample novel that consists of over 100 photographs. “I’ve been working on this novel for a long time since the year 2000. The goal is to really finish the novel,” said Lin.

Lin’s strategy for composing this novel consisted of going on Google’s website and finding photographs of Chinese people.

“My father couldn’t bring any letters or photographs from China. In some way, my novel is about recreating family in the past, so it is fiction and non-fiction. A lot of the things that I do in my classes are related to my projects outside of school,” said Lin.

Lin’s current project is impacted by what he teaches in his classes. Due to his creative writing methods, his teaching approach consists of his activities outside of the classroom. He’s asked the students to use Google and reverse searches. Lin uses Google as a text -generating device.

The $25,000 grant will help Lin on a project that he has been working on for 12 years.

“One of the nice things about taking time off gives you the time to think about your project and develop a new idea,” said Lin.

 – with additional reporting by The Gothic Times staff