Foundation Recognizes 10 Emerging Authors

Whiting organization bestows $50K grants to 10 writers
Posted Apr 11, 2025 4:00 PM CDT
Foundation Recognizes 10 Emerging Authors
This image released by the Whiting Foundation shows keynote speaker Ocean Vuong, bottom center, with Whiting Awards recipients, counter clockwise from left, Elwin Cotman, Annie Wenstrup, Karisma Price, Emil Ferris, Eliza Birkenmeier, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Samiel Kolawole, Shubha Sunder, Sofie Thanhauser,...   (Beowulf Sheehan/Whiting Foundation via AP)

The Whiting Foundation has singled out 10 emerging authors who will receive $50,000 grants bestowed annually by the organization. Since 1985, the foundation has had a mission to nurture "new creations" by supporting poets, playwrights, and authors of fiction and nonfiction. Past winners have included Tony Kushner, Colson Whitehead, Alice McDermott, and Tracy K. Smith, per the AP and NPR. This year's winners:

  • Liza Birkenmeier
  • Elwin Cotman
  • Emil Ferris
  • Samuel Kolawole
  • Claire Luchette
  • Karisma Price
  • Aisha Sabatini Sloan
  • Shubha Sunder
  • Sofi Thanhauser
  • Annie Wenstrup

The foundation website has short bios on each. Cotman, for example, writes fiction that offers "illuminating sites of bawdy humor and horror," while Price's poems are "songs, howls, portraits, critiques." Judges praised the "dreamlike" essays of Sabatini Sloan for their "startling connections between the personal and the collective." Wenstrup, another poet, brings together "the sacred and profane." (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)

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