Nine faculty members from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis are receiving support for their work through this year’s Hellman Fellowships, and it comes right when they need it most: early in their careers. Grants this year range from $15,000 to $40,000.

High Desert is an ode to the American Southwest, exploring such key events as the First Red Scare, the Tulsa Race Massacre and the West Coast’s wildfire epidemic.

Flitting from the mud-soaked floors of Venice to the glittering, towering constructions of the Abu Dhabi of his childhood and early adulthood, from present-day London to North America, André Naffis-Sahely's bracingly plain-spoken first collection gathers portraits of promised lands and those who go in search of them: laborers, travelers, dreamers; the hopeful and the dispossessed.