2025 Whiting Award Winners

Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Read about the most recent cohort below, browse the 40-year history of Whiting Award-winning writers, or search the full list of winners.

Liza Birkenmeier

2025 Winner in Drama

Liza Birkenmeier's witty plays begin as languid hangouts and turn into absurdist supercolliders full of…

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Elwin Cotman

2025 Winner in Fiction

Elwin Cotman creates exuberant fictional landscapes lit by philosophical lightning, illuminating sites of…

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Emil Ferris

2025 Winner in Fiction

The graphic novels of Emil Ferris explode expectations of genre and form and alter the way readers…

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Samuel Kọ́láwọlé

2025 Winner in Fiction

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé dances back and forth across the borders of genre to craft a propulsive and humane…

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Claire Luchette

2025 Winner in Fiction

Tender, unassuming, wise, Claire Luchette’s portrait of a halfway house of Catholic nuns in a small Rhode…

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Karisma Price

2025 Winner in Poetry

The poems of Karisma Price are songs, howls, portraits, critiques; they move nimbly between the narrative…

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Aisha Sabatini Sloan

2025 Winner in Nonfiction

In dreamlike, imagistic essays, Aisha Sabatini Sloan tests the possibilities of collaged thought, framing…

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Shubha Sunder

2025 Winner in Fiction

Beneath the calm surface of Shubha Sunder’s beautifully lucid fiction lies another world of exceptional…

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Sofi Thanhauser

2025 Winner in Nonfiction

How thrilling to encounter this uniquely elegant intelligence. Sofi Thanhauser’s curiosity is a gift to…

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Annie Wenstrup

2025 Winner in Poetry

These poems bring together the sacred and profane and make them speak to each other until they have…

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