NEW YORK — Vietnamese poet Ocean Vuong and fiction writer Catherine Lacey, a native of Tupelo, are among this year’s 10 recipients of the Whiting Awards, $50,000 prizes given to young writers of exceptional promise.
The winners announced Wednesday night also include the poets LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Layli Long Soldier and Safiya Sinclair and nonfiction writers Brian Blanchfield and J.D. Daniels. Others cited were fiction writers Mitchell S. Jackson and Alice Sola Kim and dramatist Madeleine George.
The awards were founded in 1985 and are managed by the Whiting Foundation. Previous winners include Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen and Mary Karr.
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