Fiction authors Steven Dunn and Tope Falarin and dramatists Jordan E. Cooper and Sylvia Khoury are among this year's winners of the Whiting Awards, honors with a cash prize of $50,000 that are presented to each of 10 emerging writers.

Previous winners of the award, established in 1985 and managed by the Whiting Foundation, include Colson Whitehead, Michael R. Jackson and former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, who gave a keynote address during Wednesday night's virtual ceremony.

Other new recipients of the Whiting include dramatist Donnetta Lavinia Grays, nonfiction writers Joshua Bennett and Sarah Stewart Johnson and the poets Marwa Helal, Ladan Osman and Xandria Phillips.