6 emerging female writers receive $30,000 Rona Jaffe Awards to help them complete projects

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Fiction writer Vanessa Hua and nonfiction writer Meehan Crist are among this year’s recipients of the Rona Jaffe Awards, $30,000 prizes for emerging female authors.

Hua is working on a novel about a Chinese factory girl, and Crist is studying traumatic brain injury.

The other four winners announced Tuesday were poets Ashley M. Jones and Britteney Black Rose Kapri and fiction writers Amanda Rae and Natalie Haney Tilghman.

The Jaffe grants will help the winners complete their current projects, whether allowing Tilghman to travel to Italy for research on her novel about an Italian-American family or giving Jones the time to work on her debut collection, “Magic City Gospel.”

The awards were established in 1995. Previous winners include Lan Samantha Chang, Eula Biss and Tracy K. Smith.

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