SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
August Wilson, Jonathan Franzen, Alice McDermott and Colson Whitehead, have all won the Whiting Award. For 40 years, the honor has been given to emerging writers before they become well known. Just this week, the Whiting Foundation named its latest group of 10 novelists, poets, playwrights and more. How do they spot new talent? NPR's Andrew Limbong has the answer.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: The weird thing about the Whiting Awards is that it's not really about the writing you've already done. It's about the work you could be doing, which is why the award comes with a $50,000 check.
COURTNEY HODELL: And it's intended to win someone a year where they can think about nothing but doing their own writing.
LIMBONG: That's Courtney Hodell, director of literary programs at the Whiting Foundation.
HODELL: Not, you know, how am I going to earn a living? Should I be applying for this job or that job? It's like, what does the work want me to do?
LIMBONG: So with that in mind, what is the Whiting looking for?
HODELL: I think great writing allows the reader to be a co-writer in a way. There's space for you to come to it with your own imagination and to interact with the work. And that's the kind of work that's going to stay with us.
LIMBONG: Let's just use this current crop as an example. So 10 people, right?...
HODELL: That's right.
LIMBONG: ...As it usually is - I recognize one. How do you guys - let's get into the nitty-gritty. How do you guys pick and choose? And how did you come up with this, like, batch of 10?
HODELL: If you only recognize one, that means we're doing our job. Because we want to be first in line to say yes to somebody.
LIMBONG: They have a rotating anonymous network made up of editors, writers, festival organizers, booksellers - all of whom are asked to name one writer.
HODELL: Who are you reading whose thrilling you? Who can't you stop thinking about? What's the work that's been haunting you?
LIMBONG: After they get a hundred nominees, six judges, who are experts in various fields, are tasked with picking 10.
HODELL: It's very slow. It is, in fact, glacial. Because we're reading new work that can sometimes be raw but brilliant, it requires a lot of conversation, a lot of debate.
RITA BULLWINKEL: The Whiting Award completely changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my writing career. It was hugely, hugely impactful to me.
LIMBONG: Author Rita Bullwinkel wrote the critically acclaimed novel, "Headshot," which was long-listed for the Booker Prize and got on a bunch of year-end lists last year. But back when she won the Whiting, she was working as a personal assistant and also at a literary magazine. She just had a kid and had put out one short story collection. By the time her agent started shopping "Headshot" around to publishers, there was a full-on bidding war.
BULLWINKEL: Many of the editors who bid on the book told me - they were like, well, I saw that you'd won a Whiting, so I opened the manuscript. And also, none of the editors who bid on "Headshot" had read any work that I'd written before.
LIMBONG: Even for winners like Bullwinkel, there's still some secret sauce to the Whiting's process.
BULLWINKEL: Clearly what they're doing is working. You know, you look at someone like Hernan Diaz who is a genius and is winning the Whiting, becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer, and then his sophomore book is winning the Pulitzer. I mean, it's - they're doing something right.
HERNAN DIAZ: I was deep into debt.
LIMBONG: Author Hernan Diaz.
DIAZ: We had a mortgage. We still have a mortgage, of course. We have a child. It took the pressure off.
LIMBONG: Beyond the money, Diaz said the foundation also sets writers up with agents, editors, financial advisers - the scaffolding for a writing life.
DIAZ: It felt the first time that there was a form of objective validation coming from the world.
LIMBONG: Diaz said, obviously, writing isn't tennis. There are an innumerable amount of wonderful writers writing into the void that we, as readers, are missing out on. The Whiting Award just helps decrease that number by a little bit.
Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUKE TEMPLE SONG, "MORE THAN MUSCLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
