NEW YORK >> A Hawaii-based graphic novelist, a reporter for an offshoot of The Economist, and a contributor to The New Yorker are among this year’s winners of the Whiting Award, a $50,000 award presented annually to 10 emerging fiction writers – and non-fiction authors.
R. Kikuo Johnson is the first graphic novel author to receive a Whiting since the award’s inception in 1985, according to the Whiting Foundation, which announced the awards Wednesday night. Other winners include Linda Kinstler, writing for The Economist in 1843; New York writer Stephania Taladrid; novelists Marcia Douglas, Sidik Fofana and Caribbean Fragoza; poets Tommye Blount and Ama Codjoe; Playwright Mia Chung and poet-playwright Emma Wippermann.
“Each year we look to the new Whiting Award winners who fearlessly write at the edge of the imagination to uncover the ways we think and act before we know them ourselves,” said Courtney Hodell, Whiting’s director of literary programs, in a statement . “The award aims to create a space of ease in which to do such transformative work.”
Past winners include David Foster Wallace, Jeffrey Eugenides and Suzan-Lori Parks.
The Whiting Foundation presents the awards annually to 10 new authors of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama who demonstrate early success and promise to make a lasting mark on literary culture.
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