The winners of this year's Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Awards, which honor six female authors, have been named. The 2011 winners are: Melanie Drane (poetry); Apricot Irving (nonfiction); Fowzia Karimi (fiction); Namwali Serpell (fiction); Merritt Tierce (fiction); and JoAnn Wypijewski (nonfiction). The writers will receive their prize, of $25,000 each, at a ceremony on September 22.
The award, now in its 17th year, was establsihed by author Rona Jaffe in 1995. (Jaffe passed away in 2005.) This year's winners, as in the past, were selected by anonymous committee of authors. The six winners will also do a reading on September 23.
