Whiting Foundation Announces 2019 Literary Magazine Prizes
Today the Whiting Foundation announced the winners of its 2019 Literary Magazine Prizes, the largest national awards given to nonprofit literary magazines. The awards honor organizations that actively nurture “the writers who tell us, through their art, what is important.” As well as acknowledging excellence, the prizes are intended to help publications reach new audiences, find new sources of revenue, and grow towards sustainability. The foundation also revealed that the caliber of this year’s entries inspired the judges, who served anonymously, to award two additional development grants to magazines with very small budgets, in recognition of the crucial role these publications play in nurturing writers early in their careers.
The largest monetary prize—$60,000 for a print publication with a budget of $150,000 to $500,000—was awarded to the Common, a print and digital literary journal at Amherst College in Massachusetts that is focused on the idea of place. The judges commented: “The Common’s exemplary resources for teachers and its devotion to elevating new writers will help bring into being a new generation of readers and thinkers.”
In the category of print publications with a budget under $150,000, the $30,000 award went to American Short Fiction in Austin, Texas. “Budding talent appears in company with venerated masters, and the magazine’s deep investment in its Austin community gives it a strong foundation for creating national resonance,” the judges noted.
The $30,000 prize for a digital publication was awarded to the Margins, the editorial arm of New York City’s Asian American Writers’ Workshop. The judges described the Margins as “an indispensable incubator for audacious intellect and human complexity...