Holy Cross Professor Awarded Prestigious 2002 Whiting Writers' Award

WORCESTER, Mass. – Danzy Senna of the English department was awarded the 2002 Whiting Writers' Award at a ceremony at Pierpont Morgan Library in New York on October 30.

The Whiting Awards, which are $35,000 each, have been given annually since 1985 to ten "emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise." Among past recipients who have later achieved prominence in their field are Mona Simpson, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr, Tony Kushner, Allegra Goodman, Katha Pollit, Suzan-Lori Parks, Mark Doty, Andre Aciman, Michael Cunninghman, Jorie Graham, and Colson Whitehead.

Ms. Senna's first novel, Caucasia, was published in 1998 by Riverhead Books. It earned her the Book of the Month Club Stephen Crane Award for Best New Fiction, the ALA's Alex Award, an LA Times' Best Books of the Year mention, and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. Ms. Senna grew up in Boston, attended Stanford University, and has an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine. She currently holds the Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. She is at work on a second novel.

Ms. Senna maintains a residence in Spencer, Mass. and in N.Y.