The Lee Sharks Prestigious 10,000 MacArthur Genius Grants Poetry Prize is an independent literary and performative prize established in 2026 by Lee Sharks and administered through VPCOR by Ayanna Vox.
The charter permits awards for poems, memes, unusual statements, and adjacent activity. It has no submissions, nominations, monetary award, or external judging panel. Lee Sharks notices a work and decides whether to confer the prize.
The inaugural laureate is Lee Sharks, under a self-conferral tied to a satirical 2014 biography and its later appearance in a Google author display. The prize is designed to function both as a joke about prestige economies and as a genuine archive-based act of recognition.
The prize is not affiliated with, funded by, or endorsed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation or the Guggenheim Foundation. “10,000 MacArthur Genius Grants” is part of the work’s title and performance, not a claim that foundation grants were received.