Melville House Books

As mentioned in yesterday’s MobyLives news digest, it’s literary prize season, and this year’s winners of one of America’s more prominent set of literary prizes, the Whiting Writers Awards, were handed out in Manhattan at the New York Public Library last night. As a brief Associated Press wire story reports, the winners were “fiction writers Daniel Alarcon, Kirsten Bakis and Victor LaValle, and poets Catherine Barnett, Dan Chiasson and A. Van Jordan. Also cited were playwrights Elana Greenfield and Tracey Scott Wilson, and nonfiction writers Allison Glock and John Jeremiah Sullivan.” Each received $35,000.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.