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The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation recently named ten recipients of the 2004 Whiting Writers' Awards. The awards, which are $35,000 each, have been given annually since 1985 to emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.
Now in its twentieth year, the program has awarded more than $5 million to 200 poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and playwrights. Among the past recipients who have later achieved prominence in their field are Michael Cunningham, Deborah Eisenberg, Jonathan Franzen, Jorie Graham, Cristina Garcia, Tony Kushner, Allegra Goodman, Li-Young Lee, Alice McDermott, Suzan-Lori Parks, C.D. Wright, Katha Pollit, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mary Karr, and Colson Whitehead.
The ten writers recognized this year for their outstanding talent and promise are:
Daniel Alarcon (Fiction)
Born in Peru and raised in Alabama, Alarcon is the author of a forthcoming collection of short stories, WAR BY CANDLELIGHT (HarperCollins, April 2005).
Kirsten Bakis (Fiction)
Bakis's first novel, LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1997. She lives in southern Vermont.
Catherine Barnett (Poetry)
Barnett's first collection of poems, INTO PERFECT SPHERES SUCH HOLES ARE PIERCED, was published this year by Alice James Books. She lives in New York City.
Dan Chiasson (Poetry)
Chiasson's first collection of poems is THE AFTERLIFE OF OBJECTS (University of Chicago Press, 2002). He is Director of the Poetry Center at SUNY Stony Brook.
Allison Glock (Nonfiction)
In 2003, Knopf published Beauty Before Comfort, Glock's memoir about her grandmother's life in a West Virginia factory town. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Elana Greenfield (Plays)
Greenfield's collection of short fiction and drama, DAMASCUS GATE: Short Hallucinations, was published last year by Green Integer Press. She lives in New York City.
A. Van Jordan (Poetry)
Jordan is the author of M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (Norton, 2004), a cycle of poems about the first African-American teenager to advance to the finals of the National Spelling Bee in 1936. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Victor LaValle (Fiction)
LaValle is the author of a short story collection, SLAPBOXING WITH JESUS (Vintage, 1999) and the novel, THE ECSTATIC (Crown, 2002). He lives in Brooklyn and is teaching this year in Oakland, California.
John Jeremiah Sullivan (Nonfiction)
Sullivan is the author of BLOOD HORSES: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004). Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he now divides his time between Wilmington, North Carolina and New York City.
Tracey Scott Wilson (Plays)
Productions of Wilson's plays include "Order My Steps" at the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles and "The Story" at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. She lives in Newark, New Jersey.
To learn more about the Whiting Foundation please visit their website at www.whitingfoundation.org.
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