Last night the The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation gave $50,000 to ten promising writers for the 2011 Whiting Writers’ Awards. Since the awards began in 1985, the foundation has given over $6 million to 270 poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and playwrights.

We’ve included the complete list of recipients below, along with the foundation’s short biography for each winner. Poet and past Whiting recipient Mark Doty delivered the keynote address.

Writers’ Program director Barbara Bristol had this comment in the release: “It is wonderful to see from the books these writers have published that the small, independent presses and university presses continue to be a strong, vital presence in the literary world, and it is also heartening that the larger presses are still investing in emerging literary talent.”

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