10 Promising Writers Receive $50,000 Whiting Prize

NEW YORK, Oct. 24 -- A goat farmer, a boxing fan and an Iranian-born novelist were among the 10 authors receiving Whiting Writers' Awards, prizes worth $50,000 each for "emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise."

The honorees, who were to receive the prize Wednesday night, include fiction writers Ben Fountain, Vermont goat farmer Brad Kessler and Dalia Sofer, a native of Iran. Other winners are playwrights Sheila Callaghan and Tarell Alvin McCraney; poets Paul Guest and Cate Marvin; and nonfiction writers Peter Trachtenberg, Jack Turner and Carlo Rotella, author of "Cut Time: An Education at the Fights."

The Whiting awards were established in 1985 by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, a New York-based organization "dedicated to the support of the humanities and of creative writing."

Previous winners include Pulitzer Prize winners Michael Cunningham and Jeffrey Eugenides, and a current National Book Award nominee for fiction, Denis Johnson.