New York ? Six emerging women writers have been chosen to receive this year’s Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards. The prize is worth $10,000 for each of the winners.

“The awards were created to provide encouragement to these women writers when they need it most — right as they are starting out,” Jaffe, author of the children’s story “The Last of the Wizards” and many other books, said in a recent statement.

The winners, who will be honored at a ceremony Thursday, include poets Kathleen Graber and Joanna Klink, fiction writers Allison McKittrick, Katharine Noel, Olette Trouve and fiction-nonfiction writer Julia Whitty.

The awards were established in 1995. Previous recipients include such well regarded writers as Packer and Karen Bender.