Whiting Award Winners

The New York Times praises Vuong's "experimental, highly poetic" novel, writing that "the book is brilliant in the way it pays attention not to what our thoughts make us feel, but to what our feelings make us think."

On the podcast, Brown talks about how growing up in a black church prepared him to be a poet, and why he believes that "poems are better built out of what we don't understand, not what we do already know, but what we're trying to figure out and better understand."

In Body journal, a new piece by Weiner explores vividly depicts the passionate embrace of "new lovers joined by the need to be consoled, the need to console.

Alexander Chee reflects on honoring queer history in the New Republic. "See if you can feel the joy so many have fought and died for," he directs readers, "even if just for a moment, before you go back to fight again."

The New York Times talks to Ocean Vuong about his new novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and why "To read from the book is a second chance. He also delves into his practice of meditating among tombstones and why he believes speaking Vietnamese gives him an advantage as a writer.

In Image Journal, Shane McCrae writes, "I think all writers are inclined towards a degree of lonesomeness. And to a certain extent, this seems healthy to me." He goes on to explore writerly friendships, writing of the difficulty -- and beauty -- in connecting with others.

Alexander Chee shares an excerpt from his introduction to a new edition of East Goes West by Younghill Kang, a novel that "has kindled in me something I feel quite powerfully now, a gift from both the poet in the novel and the poet who wrote it," in Buzzfeed.

Smith is the 26th recipient of the Harvard Arts Medal, which is given annually to a graduate or faculty member who has achieved artistic excellence and made a contribution through the arts to education or the public good. Fellow poet, Pulitzer winner, and Whiting winner Jorie Graham introduced Smith as a "singularly glorious practitioner" of the form.

Choi is a finalist for her translation from the Korean of poet Kim Hyesoon's collection Autobiography of Death.

In a conversation with activist Darnell Moore and social innovation expert Michael Latt, Mitchell S. Jackson dissects the lack of emotion men are expected to project, and the idea that "the oppressors are experts at making us believe we are unworthy of love."

On Literary Hub, Mary Karr remembers her Whiting Award notification call: "I grabbed my son and squeezed his body to mine and shouted, We won a prize! We went skipping through our small rental, hollering."

Of his writing process, Bitsui explains, "I want my work to feel alive at the moment of the reading — I want people to sense they are in the poem with me, witnessing these events as they unfold."

"When I’m working on a photo," Tulathimutte writes, "I have no interest in making anyone paler or thinner. What I’m doing is more like digital skincare." For VICE, he writes about photo retouching and body image.
 

Congratulations to Catherine Lacey and Shane McCrae, who received 2019 Fellowships in Fiction and Poetry, respectively.

Antoinette Nwandu is profiled as one of your black playwrights challenging the conventions of theater. Of her attitude toward art, Nwandu says, "It’s going to get really
bleak, but we’re still alive, which means hope is not lost." 

LaValle discusses the science fiction anthology he recently co-edited, A People's Future of the United States. Of the non-utopian impulse running through the collection's stories, he explains, "One of the more profound ideas for people is to grapple with the idea that our personal happiness does not necessarily equate to a universal happiness."

A reviewer for the magazine reflects on the powerful use of silence in Kaminsky's latest collection, explaining, "As a disabled person myself, it made me think of my disabled body as an instrument of defiance against a world that regards bodies as mere tools or currency."

Van der Vliet Oloomi received the award for her novel Call Me Zebra, which PEN/Faulkner Executive Director Gwydion Suilebhan called "a rare and remarkable work of art" that "makes absolutely clear what a towering moment this is for American fiction.”

In new work on Poets.org, Levin mediates on what she dubs "a house/ with a brain inside. Another place/ where eating/ and thinking/ tango and spar."

On Literary Hub, the three Special Honorees of the Lambda Literary Awards discuss their literary influences and writing styles. Of the latter, Chee explains, "There is always a place in the work where you need to let in some mystery and happenstance."

Smith received the award for her collection Wade in the Water. "She has not only put out a book of her poems during her tenture [as U.S. Poet Laureate]," said Karen Long, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards manager, "but some of the poems speak to our national moment."

Freudenberger describes her experience of writing as "an extension of reading for me, and I knew I was a reader from the moment I learned" and talks to the bookstore about hello fights, advice from Grace Paley's stories, and her new book, Lost and Wanted.

"I had to go this far in order/ To present myself as a whole being/ You'd heed and believe in," muses Brown in a poem, featured on Literary Hub, from his new collection, The Tradition.

Brown talks about his invention of the duplex, a new poetic form, on Poetry Foundation, explaining, "I wanted a form that in my head was black and queer and Southern. Since I am carrying these truths in this body as one, how do I get a form that is many forms?"