Ten emerging writers have won the 2024 Whiting Awards, announced during Wednesday night’s ceremony.
Each writer will receive $50,000 to support their craft – one of the largest prizes given to new authors. Several previous Whiting Prize winners have gone on to publish award-winning and best-selling works, including Hernan Diaz, Catherine Lacey, Colson whiteheads, Alice McDermott And Duong Vuong. Some of this year’s winners have also made names for themselves in the book world.
Courtney Hodell, director of Whiting’s literary program, said in a statement: “This year’s winners have created their own liminal space – where potential exists across nations, whether that genre, language, country or self-definition.”
Here are the 2024 Whiting Prize winners:
(with comments from the Whiting committee)
Aaliyah Bilal (Fiction) whose short story collection Folk temple “invites readers into a world whose complexities are often overlooked, informing her explorations with concrete and psychological insight”
Yoon Choi (Fiction) features “smooth prose that takes readers through the slow, layered stories of the Korean diaspora, exploring the bonds and rifts between generations and the weight of secrets” In the work Skinship
Shayok Misha Chowdhury (drama) who “wrote with ruthless splendor and creativity about the boundaries of language, sexuality, the public self and the hidden life”, including in Obscenity in public
Frances Ya-Chu Cowwhig (play) “featuring meticulous and politically incisive allegories that bring the history of nations, capitals and censorship to life,” including in the trilogy Chinese opera
Elisa Gonzalez (poem) Who uses it? Iliad to examine her brother’s death
Taylor Johnson (poetry) has poems, including those in Heritage, To be “of iron sophistication that sings of longing, a longing for new language and form”
Gothataone Moeng (novel) features “nine passionate, powerful stories, rooted in the villages and cities of Botswana, examining all that blooms and falls apart in women’s bonds, desires and ambitions” IN Call and answer
Charif Shanahan Whose (poem) is it? Dau vet “begin to discover how one should live
Javier Zamora (non-fiction and poetry) who is New York Times-bestseller memoirist Solito and is also the author of the poetry collection “careful, spell” No accompanying person. “His work turns testimony into art; whatever he eyes next will expand us”
Ada Zhang (novel) has “graceful, crystalline stories” in The pain of others”explores the paradox that historical silence and the legacy of the past – especially the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese Americans – can lead to new opportunities and new voices”
