NEW YORK — The 2012 Whiting Awards were presented to 10 authors, poets and playwrights on Tuesday.
The award, established in 1985 by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, is worth $50,000.
Among the recipients is Atsuro Riley, the author of “Romey’s Order” (University of Chicago Press, 2010), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress. His poetry has been honored with a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the Wood Prize given by Poetry magazine.
Riley’s poem “Hutch” was chosen for “The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine,” an anthology published this month in celebration of the magazine’s centennial. His work has also appeared in The Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, The Threepenny Review, and The New Republic.
Born and raised in the South Carolina Low Country, Riley lives in San Francisco.
The other recipients are Ciaran Berry (poetry), Danai Gurira (plays), Alan Heathcock (fiction), Samuel D. Hunter (plays), Mona Mansour (plays), Anthony Marra (fiction), Meg Miroshnik (plays), Hanna Pylväinen (fiction), and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (non-fiction).
Past winners have included Tony Kushner, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Mark Doty, Michael Cunningham and Jeffrey Eugenides.
For more information on the award, visit www.whitingfoundation.org.