April 10, 2025, 10:20am
In a ceremony on Wednesday night, the Whiting Foundation announced the ten new recipients of the Whiting Award, an award “designed to recognize excellence and promise in a spectrum of emerging talent.” The award comes with a monetary prize of $50,000 which aims to give winners “the chance to devote themselves full time to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work.”
Past winners include Lucy Sante, Yiyun Li, Jericho Brown, Ling Ma, Tracy K. Smith, and Colson Whitehead.
The 2025 Whiting Award winners are:
Liza Birkenmeier (Drama)
Elwin Cotman (Fiction)
Emil Ferris (Graphic Fiction)
Claire Luchette (Fiction)
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé (Fiction)
Karisma Price (Poetry)
Aisha Sabatini Sloan (Nonfiction)
Shubha Sunder (Fiction)
Sofi Thanhauser (Nonfiction)
Annie Wenstrup (Poetry)
“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.”