World Literary Awards

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Whiting Awards ほわいてぃんぐしょう

Edition 39 (2024)

FictionNonfictionPoetryDrama

Winners

10 people
Aaliyah Bilal Winner

A story collection centered on Black Muslim communities, tracing how faith, family, work, and desire cross generations and places. It looks closely at the small shifts that shape each life.

A story collection about Black Muslim life, quietly observing the spaces between faith, family, desire, and work.

faithfamilyBlack Muslim lifecommunity
Yoon Choi Winner

A story collection following Korean and Korean American families through migration, memory, and intimate forms of care. Deep connections emerge within the small tensions of home.

A story collection about Korean family memory, migration, and the intimate care that holds people together.

familymigrationKorean American lifememory

Nine stories set in Botswana’s villages and towns follow women, girls, and widows as desire, duty, and community pressure echo through their lives.

Nine stories from Botswana that trace women’s desires, duties, and the pressures of community.

Botswanawomenfamilycommunity
Ada Zhang Winner

A story collection centered on Chinese and Chinese American outsiders, where the long shadow of history meets personal memory. It balances isolation with the possibility of new beginnings.

A quietly luminous collection about Chinese and Chinese American lives, isolation, and new openings beyond history’s shadow.

Chinese American lifememoryhistoryalienation

An experimental play about family, language, and queer self-understanding. It moves between humor and pain while tracing a self shaped across cultures.

An experimental play about family, language, and queer identity.

playfamilyqueer identitylanguage

A trilogy of plays that turns capital, censorship, and ideology into propulsive parables across different times and places. Political and historical pressure gathers inside each vivid scene.

A trilogy of plays that stages capital, censorship, and ideology as sharp political parables.

playscapitalismcensorshippolitical fable
Javier Zamora Winner

A poetry collection shaped by migration, family separation, and border crossing. It gives urgent voice to a childhood journey and the memory that follows it.

A poetry collection about migration, family separation, and the remembered urgency of a childhood journey.

migrationfamilypoetrymemory

A debut poetry collection that moves through art, history, love, grief, and the body. Across nations and languages, it holds beauty and pain together.

A debut collection of poems about art, history, love, grief, and the body.

poetryarthistorygrief

A poetry collection about family, gender, grief, and the making of the self. It revisits what is inherited and turns it into a record of change and survival.

A poetry collection on family, gender, grief, and the work of becoming oneself.

poetryfamilygendersurvival

Poems that trace family, intimacy, race, sexuality, and violence with precision and restraint. Sharp observation reveals both distance and attachment.

A precise poetry collection tracing family, intimacy, race, and sexuality.

poetryfamilysexualityrace