The 10 winners of the 37th Whiting Awards, each of which comes with a $50,000 prize, were announced on April 5 in an in-person ceremony at the New-York Historical Society. The event featured a keynote by MacArthur Fellow and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Maggie Nelson, and readings by each of the winners will take place at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn on April 7.
The winners are:
- Claire Boyles, for fiction
- Rita Bullwinkel, for fiction
- Ina Cariño, for poetry
- Anthony Cody, for poetry
- Anaïs Duplan, for nonfiction
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, for nonfiction
- Megha Majumdar, for fiction
- Jesse McCarthy, for nonfiction
- Nana Nkweti, for fiction
- Claire Schwartz, for poetry
The Whiting Awards are given annually to writers of drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A total of $9 million has been awarded to 370 fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, and playwrights to date.
“As the world opens up, these brilliant writers open up our world,” said Courtney Hodell, director of literary programs, in a statement. “From fresh cultural criticism to poems of place and personhood and appetite to fiction that brings surreal wit to compassionate portraits, their work is the spring thaw of the mind."
