Three print magazines and two digital publications were named winners of the fourth annual Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes, taking home a combined total of $144,000 in funding. The prizes, which are administered by the Whiting Foundation, have been awarded since 2018 to a total of 18 literary magazines to honor their “excellence in publishing, advocacy for writers, and a unique contribution to the strength of the overall literary community.”
This year’s winners, with citations, are as follows:
The Massachusetts Review (Amherst, Mass.), a “trove of finely written and imaginative stories from around the globe, exemplary in its commitment to formal experiment and traditional literary excellence, and to enriching the scope of our literature through its translations.”
- Medium-Budget Print Prize Winner ($150,000-$500,000 budget)
- Total prize: $60,000
Bellevue Literary Review (New York, N.Y.), “a unique venue for exploring writing about medicine and the body in illness and health, which was the first literary journal to arise from a medical setting and is now a fast-growing hub for dialogues between the medical community and the arts.”
- Small-Budget Print Prize Winner (under $150,000 budget)
- Total prize: $30,000
The Arkansas International (Fayetteville, Ark.), “a bright new star in the literary firmament distinguished by its exceptional fiction, beautiful design, commitment to translation, and the oasis it provides for literary culture in the American heartland.”
- Print Development Grantee (under $50,000 budget)
- Total prize: $15,000
Latin American Literature Today (Norman, Okla.), “an essential literary bridge across the Americas distinguished by its fully multilingual issues featuring the greatest contemporary Latin American writing in Spanish and indigenous languages.”
- Digital Prize Winner (under $500,000 budget)
- Total prize: $30,000
Full Stop (New York, N.Y.), “a dynamic and richly eclectic platform for book criticism, untethered to the zeitgeist but fearlessly contemporary, which brings hundreds of books that might otherwise go unnoticed into larger literary conversations.”
- Digital Development Grantee (under $15,000 budget)
- Total prize: $9,000
The prize money is distributed to each winner over the course of three years; the awards in the second and third years are made as matching grants, with the Whiting Foundation doubling or tripling new gifts.
“Receiving the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize during this pandemic year is an incredible honor for Bellevue Literary Review, since BLR’s focus is on health, illness and healing,” said Danielle Ofri, editor-in-chief of the BLR in a statement. “The vulnerability of illness is now part of daily life in an unprecedented manner; support from the Whiting Foundation will invigorate our work at the intersection of healthcare and the arts.”
“The Whiting Award Literary Magazine Prize will grant us the resources to explore new territories, including expanding our readership, raising honorariums, and much more,” said Arkansas International director of publicity Lily Buday. “We’re also excited to grow both our local and international presence via in-person and virtual events.”
This year’s winners were chosen from an application pool of 100 applicants. The call for applications for the 2022 prizes is now open; the deadline is December 1.
This piece was produced in partnership with Publishers Weekly.
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