The Whiting Foundation announced its 2012 literary award recipients Tuesday. The 10 authors will each receive a $50,000 grant, no strings attached.

The Whiting Awards are geared to help extraordinary new writers find the footing to achieve success. Awards are made to poets, novelists, short-story writers, playwrights and writers of nonfiction.

Past recipients include Jeffrey Eugenides, Tony Kushner, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Mark Doty, Colson Whitehead, C.D. Wright, Douglas Kearney, Michael Cunningham, Tracy K. Smith and John Jeremiah Sullivan.

From the Whiting Foundation’s release:

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, nonfiction.  Her first book, “Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America,” published by Little, Brown in 2011, was named among 100 Notable Books of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Originally from Houston, she lives in New York City.

via 2012 Whiting Award winners announced – latimes.com.

February 2011, Ron Kavanaugh editor of MosaicMagazine.org, sat with Ms. Rhodes-Pitts to discuss her newly releases book “Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America”