2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards Winners Announced!

Now in its 24th year, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards are bestowed to women writers whose work contributes to culture and society. According to their press release, "The 2018 winners are Chelsea Bieker, Lisa Chen, Lydia Conklin, Gabriela Garcia, Karen Outen, Alison C. Rollins. The program—the only national literary awards program of its kind devoted exclusively to women—was created by celebrated novelist Rona Jaffe to identify and support women writers of unusual talent and promise in the early stages of their writing careers." From there: 

The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards are given to writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Since the program began in 1995, the Foundation has awarded over $2.5 million to emergent women writers. Past recipients of the Writers’ Awards, such as Rachel Aviv, Elif Batuman, Eula Biss, Vievee Francis, Rivka Galchen, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, ZZ Packer, Helen Phillips, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Namwali Serpell, Solmaz Sharif, Tracy K. Smith, Mary Syzbist, and Tiphanie Yanique have since received wider critical recognition, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Whiting Award.

On Friday, September 14 at 7 p.m. the winners will read in New York University’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series at the Vernon Writers House (58 West 10th Street).

Learn more about this year's winners via the Foundation's website.