How do the selectors decide who is emerging?
The selectors rely on their own expertise and experience to assess a candidate’s work and résumé and make a judgment about where a writer is in his or her career. A general definition of emerging for a poet will differ from that for a fiction writer or a playwright, and any general definition in a particular genre will not suffice for everyone. Therefore, that question is grappled with on a candidate-by-candidate basis with no numerical yardstick, such as age or publication record. Keep in mind that an emerging writer is not the same as an under-recognized one. A writer may have published several books over a number of years and received little critical attention for the work, and one might feel that that writer has yet to emerge fully. Despite the lack of recognition, however, that writer is in mid-career, and is therefore too far along for a Whiting Award.
