Chelcie Parry’s photo of Mia Chung; Photo of Ama Codjoe by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York; Patrick Campbell’s Marcia Douglas; photos of all others by Willy Somma/The Whiting Foundation
Chelcie Parry’s photo of Mia Chung; Photo of Ama Codjoe by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York; Patrick Campbell’s Marcia Douglas; photos of all others by Willy Somma/The Whiting Foundation
The 2023 Whiting Award winners may not have many or any famous titles to their name — but that’s the point.
According to the awards’ judges, the recipients of the $50,000 prize, announced Wednesday night, show a lot of talent and promise. The Whiting Awards aim to “recognize excellence and promise in a wide range of emerging talent, giving most winners the first opportunity to devote full-time to their writing work.” them or take bold new risks in their work,” the Whiting Foundation noted in a statement. Press Release.
The Whiting Prize is one of the most valuable and largest monetary awards available to emerging writers. Since its establishment in 1985, recipients such as ocean king, White-headed Colson, Sigrid Nunez, Alice McDermott, Fake Tolentino And Spirit Horse achieved career success or went on to win countless other prestigious awards including the Pulitzers, National Book Awards and Tony Awards.
Courtney Hodell, literary program director, said: “Every year, we look to new Whiting Prize winners, writing fearlessly with imagination, to reveal our way of thinking and acting. before we knew about them ourselves.” “The award aims to create a comfortable space in which such transformative works can be made.”
The ceremony will include a keynote speech by the Pulitzer Prize winner and PEN . president Ayad Akhtar.
The 2023 Whiting Prize winners, with commentary from the Whiting Foundation, are:
Tommye Blount (poetry), whose collection, Fantasia for the man in the blue shirt,” hurls at the characters like a miner with a headlamp; desire, wit, and a dose of intimidation tempered his precision.”
Cane Chung (play), the author of the play Catch as catch, Their plays are “a theatrical hall of mirrors that capture and break layers of sympathy and trust.”
Ama Codjoe (poetry), author of Greenest nudewhose poems are “folklore and lyrical precisely to the experience of Black women.“
Marcia Douglas (novel), author of The magic equation of fearwho “created a speculative ancestry project that sampled and remixed the living and the dead into an astonishing sonic texture.”
Sidik Fofana (novel), author of Stories from downstairs tenantswho “hears voices with the careful ears of a reporter but records them with the unprotected heart of a fiction writer.”
Caribbean Fragoza (novel), author of Eat the mouth that feeds youwhose short story “combines gothic horror with the loving and wrathful rhythms of ordinary life, opening up the intricate introspection of her Chicanx characters.”
R. Kikuo Johnson (novel), author of Nobodya writer and illustrator — the first graphic novelist to win the award — who “stitched a gentle seam along the frayed edges of three generations in a Hawaiian family.”
Linda Kinstler (non-fiction), a contributing writer to economist’S Magazine 1843whose reportage “boils with eagerness, moving like those spy thrillers she takes her hat off to.”
Stephania Taladrid (non-fiction), a contributing writer at New Yorkers, person, “writing from a still eye at the center of controversies or spiraling upheavals, she finds and defends the unforgettable human being – whether at an abortion clinic on Roe sues Wade turned upside down or stood witnessing the pain of the affected Uvalde parent.”
Emma Wipperman (poetry and drama), author of an upcoming book Joan of Arkansas,”a work of climate anxiety marked not by didacticism but by sympathy; It conveys happiness even when it is playing with angels…”
