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'The Future Of Literature': Whiting Awards Celebrate 10 Emerging Writers

The novelists, poets and playwrights won Wednesday partly for their work so far, but also for the promise they've shown. If previous winners are an indication, it's a promise they're likely to keep.
The 2019 Whiting Award recipients (clockwise from top left): poet Kayleb Rae Candrilli, poet Tyree Daye, novelist Hernan Diaz, playwright Michael R. Jackson, fiction writer Terese Marie Mailhot, nonfiction writer Nadia Owusu, playwright Lauren Yee, poet Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, novelist Merrit Tierce and fiction writer Nafissa Thompson-Spires.

Fair warning: It may be tough to find some of the 2019 Whiting Award winners on the shelves of your local bookstore. Most of the emerging writers have little more than a single widely published book to their name. A couple of them don't even have that.

But what the 10 new Whiting recipients lack in publishing credits and international awards, they more than make up for in talent and promise — at least, according to

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