Benjamin Percy Presented with Prestigious Whiting Award

October 30, 2008--Graywolf Press is delighted to announce that Benjamin Percy, author of Refresh, Refresh, has been presented with a 2008 Whiting Writers Award for emerging writers. The awards, which are $50,000 each, an increase of $10,000 from previous years, have been given annually since 1985 to emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.

Since its inception in 1985, the program has awarded more than $6 million to 240 poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and playwrights. Among the past recipients who have later achieved prominence in their fields are Jonathan Franzen, William T. Vollman, Mary Karr, Colson Whitehead, Tony Kushner, Jeffrey Eugenides, August Wilson, Jorie Graham, Cristina Garcia, and David Foster Wallace.

The 2008 recipients were announced at a ceremony at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York on Wednesday, October 29. Dr. Robert L. Belknap, President of the Foundation, and trustee Kate Douglas Torrey presented the ten writers with their awards. Other writers recognized at the ceremony include Mischa Berlinski, Rick Hilles, Donovan Hohn, Douglas Kearney, Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Muñoz, Dael Orlandersmith, Julie Sheehan, and Lysley Tenorio.

"It's a great pleasure to see what fine work is coming out of this year's group of award recipients, in all its variousness and vigor," said Barbara Bristol, the Director of the Writers' Program. "These writers are strikingly well-traveled in imagination if not in fact. We expect we will hear from them again and again in the years to come."

Benjamin Percy is the author of Refresh, Refresh, published by Graywolf Press in 2007. The collection of stories is set in rural Oregon and confronts the challenges of small town America. He is the author of The Language of Elk, and his stories have appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, and others. The title story "Refresh, Refresh," was selected for Best American Short Stories 2006. His new novel, The Wilding, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.