NEW YORK -- Novelist Mischa Berlinski, one of last year's finalists for the National Book Awards, is among the 10 recipients announced this week of the Whiting Writers' Awards for authors of "exceptional talent and promise in early career."
The winners each will receive $50,000.
Berlinski, whose "Fieldwork" came out in 2007, is among five fiction writers to win a Whiting in 2008.
The others are Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Munoz, Benjamin Percy and Lysley Tenorio.
The remaining five winners are poets Rick Hilles, Douglas Kearney and Julie Sheehan; playwright Dael Orlandersmith and essayist Donovan Hohn.
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 honorees include Denis Johnson, winner of the National Book Award for fiction last year, Jeffrey Eugenides, William T. Vollman and Jorie Graham.
