Mavis Staples Receives National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellowship

The Fellowship Award Ceremonies will be held in Washington D.C. in September 2006 and include a banquet at the Library of Congress, an awards presentation on Capitol Hill, and a concert at the Strathmore Center in Bethesda, MD.

Fellowship recipients are nominated by the public, and then judged by a panel of experts in folk and traditional arts on the basis of their continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners and teachers. This year a nine-member panel reviewed 217 nominations for the 11 fellowships.