New York ? Five fiction authors, three poets and two playwrights are winners of the 18th annual Whiting Writers’ Awards, given to “emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.”

Honorees receive $35,000 each.

“We expect that they will continue to produce strong work in the future and we hope this award will help make that possible,” Barbara K. Bristol, director of the Whiting writers’ program, said in a statement Wednesday.

Previous winners include Tony Kushner, Jonathan Franzen and Katha Pollitt.

Among those cited this year were Justin Cronin, a Philadelphia-based novelist whose debut work, “Mary and O’Neil,” won a PEN Hemingway Award; New York-based playwright Melissa James Gibson, winner of an Obie award for “(sic)”; and poet Elizabeth Arnold, a Washington, D.C., resident and author of “The Reef.”

Other winners were fiction writers Kim Edwards of Lexington, Ky.; Michelle Huneven of Altadena, Calif.; and Danzy Senna and Jeffrey Renard Allen of New York; poets David Gewanter and Joshua Weiner of Washington, D.C.; and playwright Evan Smith of Savannah, Ga.

The awards were established in 1985 by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. Winners are selected by a committee of writers, scholars and editors.