Whiting Award

The Whiting Award is one of the most prestigious American prizes for emerging writers, presented annually since 1985 by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation to ten writers working in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Each award carries a prize of $50,000—one of the largest annual literary stipends available to early-career American writers—based on early accomplishment and the promise of future work. Unlike most prizes, writers cannot apply; they are nominated confidentially by a rotating anonymous network of editors, publishers, festival directors, and booksellers, and the final selection is made by six judges who are experts in different literary fields. The Whiting Award is widely regarded as among the best predictors of long-term literary careers: alumni include August Wilson, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Colson Whitehead, Jorie Graham, Tracy K. Smith, Jericho Brown, and Ling Ma. The foundation's aim is to find exceptional talent at the moment when recognition and financial support can have the greatest impact—often before a writer's breakthrough work is published. The Whiting Foundation also awards Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes to outstanding nonprofit literary journals, and the C.D. Wright Award for Poetry. The annual Whiting Award announcement in spring is eagerly anticipated by the literary community as a leading indicator of voices that will shape American letters.