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Danzy Senna, the College’s Jenks Chair, was awarded
the 2002 Whiting Writers’ Award at a ceremony at Pierpont
Morgan Library in New York on Oct. 30.
The Whiting Awards, which are $35,000 each, have been given
annually since 1985 to 10 “emerging writers of exceptional
talent and promise.” Past recipients include Mona Simpson,
David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr, Tony Kushner
and Jorie Graham.
Senna received her bachelor of arts degree from Stanford
University and her master of fine arts degree in creative
writing from the University of California at Irvine. Prior
to coming to Holy Cross, she worked as a researcher and reporter
at Newsweek and served as visiting writer at Sarah
Lawrence College, Bronxville, N.Y. She has published articles
and essays in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers,
including SELF, Glamour, The Village Voice Literary Supplement,
O, The UTNE Reader and The Nation. Her essays
and short stories have been widely anthologized in such collections
as Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural,
and Giant Steps: A New Generation of African American
Writers.
Caucasia, Senna’s first novel, was published
in 1998 by Riverhead Books. It received the Book of the Month
Club Stephen Crane Award for Best New Fiction, the ALA’s
Alex Award, a Los Angeles Times’ “Best Books
of the Year” mention; it was also a finalist for the
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange
Prize.
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