Whiting Award Winners

"Griff was all of them in one black body that night in the ring, and all of them when the white men took him out back to those two iron rings." Whitehead's upcoming novel, The Nickel Boys, about two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida, is excerpted in The New Yorker.

"Despite — or even because of — his awareness of suffering, he does not simply offer us joy," writes the journal of Kaminsky's latest collection. "He demands it from us."

"I’m hard to offend and I don’t take offense at any adjectives. The noun is where it’s at! And the verb. Adjectives are seasoning, not things that bother me," Hayes explains. He delves into other topics including making art in the Trump era and the need for universities to expand with culture.

On ESPNW, Glock writes about two of the women who inspired her as a teen, explaining, "These were not women who asked for permission. Who valued manners above passion. These were women lit from within by fires and furies." 

In the New Yorker, Whiting winner Colson Whitehead talks about what drew him to the subject for his upcoming novel The Nickel Boys, how much of the real story he used in his book, and more.

In the New Yorker, Cantú reflects on what the border wall means for American myth. "Corrective histories reveal the gruesome truths we have long been made to look away from," he writes, "but they rarely show how violence is internalized by its victims." 

The Whiting Foundation regrets the passing of accomplished poet Linda Gregg, Whiting 1985, a poet who "use[d] the seen world as a gateway to the richness of inner life." (Tracy K. Smith, The New York Times)

Barnett received the award for her collection Human Hours. The editors said of her win, "These poems offer the human tenderness and intimacy that are antidotes to the contemporary tendency to avoid vulnerability."

Phillips received the award for his book The Circuit. The judges remarked, "A book lovingly built for fans and non-fans alike, Phillips is uncommonly generous with the reader, taking time to render the game’s fine points with a ceremonious attention that can only be described as devotion."

Boston Globe praises the musicality of Jackson's writing, and observes that,  "Now an acclaimed author, Jackson would seem to have made all the right choices. His virtuosic wail of a book reminds us that for a black person in America, it can never be that easy."

Van der Vliet Oloomi is a finalist for her novel Call Me Zebra. The PEN/Faulkner Award is the country’s largest peer-juried prize for novels and short stories.

Jackson talks about how the #MeToo movement has affected his work, challenging the idea of what it means to be an American, and more.

In the New Yorker, Row writes about the struggle of giving children space in the modern age, remarking, "As my children get older, I’m realizing how profoundly my instincts have been shaped by this culture of constant supervision, which wants to believe that it’s the same thing as intimacy."

On Medium, Jackson shares the nuts and bolts of making a living as a writer. He also shares some of the experiences he had when incarcerated that led him to begin writing, explaining, "Guys in prison are always saying, 'I wish someone would write my life story. It would be a bestseller.' So I thought I’d start writing my life story." 

Cantú shares some of his thoughts on the current border crisis, and talks about the process of writing his memoir about working for the U.S. Border Patrol. "How do you, as a journalist or as a nonfiction writer, as the one whose name gets stamped on the story," he asks, "how do you lend that authorship to the people whose stories you are telling?"

"Gilbert freaks out our eye," writes Koestenbaum, in a piece for Artforum about on how the art of David Gilbert has "changed the way I see ordinary objects."

"I do believe because of what reading a poem can do to me, that a poem can change a life," Brown tells the magazine. "But I’m not under the impression that poems are gonna go out there and suddenly everybody’s gonna vote right."

"There are no easily attainable utopias on offer in A People's Future of the United States, but we catch tantalizing glimpses of possible better tomorrows," writes Barnes & Noble of the "memorable" anthology edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams.

"Li helps the reader to look directly at grief, to consider other ways of understanding such an enormous loss through the creation of something new," writes the blog of Li's new novel, written shortly after her son's death by suicide.

"These futures are not easy. But they show us how we too might find ways to live, and live well, no matter what is coming," writes NPR of the science fiction anthology A People's Future of the United States, edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams.

In an excerpt from her latest book, published posthumously, Wright delves into deep research on beech trees and the lives that surround them. " "The woman who cuts my hair said a friend of hers was earning big enough money with her smudging feathers to quit her regular job," she writes. "This would be ill-advised back East."

Wang talks about bedroom dancing, the importance of a writer's group, and gives her advice for achieving excellency at karaoke: "Enthusiasm makes up for everything else. Go out there and sing your heart out."