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

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.

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."

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."

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."

Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Tyree Daye, Hernan Diaz, Michael R. Jackson, Terese Marie Hailhot, Nadia Owusu, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Merritt Tierce, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and Lauren Yee are recipients of 2019 Whiting Awards for their evocative, courageous, and incisive work in drama, nonfiction, poetry, and fiction!

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?"

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." 

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."

"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."