NEW YORK: The Whiting Foundation has announced the 2025 winners for the 40th anniversary of the Whiting Awards. Among the 10 writers honored for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, Liza Birkenmeier was awarded for drama, receiving $50,000. The prizes are designed to recognize excellence and promise in a spectrum of emerging talent, giving most winners the chance to devote themselves full time to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work.
A statement about Birkenmeier’s plays says they “begin as languid hangouts and turn into an absurdist supercollider full of swerves and spaces…Wistful and incisive, her plays tuck big ideas inside syncopated fragments of chat that capture the music of how we think and speak now.”
Liza Birkenmeier plays include Dr. Ride’s American Beach House (Ars Nova) and Grief Hotel (Clubbed Thumb), which received an Obie Award Special Citation. She was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Drama, was the Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Ars Nova, and a member of the Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater. She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and a MacDowell and Yaddo fellow.
“These writers demonstrate astounding range; each has invented the tools they needed to carve out their narratives and worlds,” said Courtney Hodell, Whiting’s director of literary programs, in a statement. “Taken as a whole, their work shows a sharply honed sensitivity to our history, both individual and collective, and a passionate curiosity as to where a deeper understanding of that history can take us.”
The ceremony tonight included a keynote by 2016 Whiting Award winner Ocean Vuong and appearances from past fellow Whiting Award winners. For drama, James Ijames, who received the award in 2017, shared remarks and presented the award to Birkenmeier. Readings by the 2025 Whiting Award winners will be emceed this year by Tony Tulathimutte (author of the National Book Award-longlisted Rejection and Private Citizens) on Thursday, April 10 at McNally Jackson Seaport at 6:30 p.m. ET.
The Whiting Awards, established by the Whiting Foundation in 1985, remain one of the most esteemed and largest monetary gifts ($50,000) for emerging writers. They are given to recognize early-career achievement and empower recipients to fulfill the promise of exceptional literary work to come. More than $10 million has been awarded to 400 fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, and playwrights.
