NEW YORK CITY: On Wednesday, Mar. 22, the Whiting Foundation announced its ten new Whiting Award winners, honoring them with a ceremony at the New York Historical Society keynoted by Pulitzer winner Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene and The Emperor of All Maladies).
Among the winners were playwrights Clarence Coo, author of Beautiful Province (Belle Province) and a Rita Goldberg fellow at the Lark; James Ijames, author of WHITE and The Most
Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha and a member of both InterAct Core Writers Group and the Foundry; and Clare Barron, author of You Got Older and Dance Nation.
The Whiting Awards, established by the Whiting Foundation in 1985, bestow $50,000 on emerging writers, based on the criteria of early-career achievement and the promise of superior literary work to come. More than $7 million has been awarded to 320 fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, and playwrights to date. “The prize offers the gift of radical freedom to writers with the talent and imagination to match it,” said Courtney Hodell, Director of Writers’ Programs.
The list of Whiting Award recipients since 1985 includes then-emerging major playwights such as August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, and Tarell Alvin McCraney.
