North Carolina poet Tyree Daye is one of ten recipients of a 2019 Whiting Award, given annually by the Whiting Foundation.
Daye, who hails from Youngsville, receives $50,000.
This year’s recipients are a mix of poets, playwrights and prose writers, some not yet published, some with a handful of works out. Winners include Daye;Â poets Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, and nonfiction writers Terese Marie Mailhot and Nadia Owusu. Others honored were fiction writers Nafissa Thompson-Spires and Merritt Tierce and playwrights Lauren Yee and Michael R. Jackson, who said the Whiting would help him focus on the production of A Strange Loop, premiering in May at Playwrights Horizons in Times Square.
Tyree Daye is the author of two poetry collections, River Hymns (2017 APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner) and Cardinal, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press (2020). Daye is a 2017 Ruth Lilly Finalist and Cave Canem fellow. Daye’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Nashville Review. Daye won the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship, the 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writers-In- Residence, and is a 2019 Kate Tufts Finalist.
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come. The Foundation does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations.
Past winners include Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Charles D’Ambrosio, Tony Kushner, and Andrew X. Pham.
For more information, visit https://www.whiting.org.