The Whiting Foundation announced the 10 winners of their 2026 Whiting Award for emerging writers on Wednesday night.

The esteemed early-career honor— which comes with a $50,000 prize — is given to writers “in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments and promise,” according to the foundation.

Since 1985, the foundation has awarded emerging authors with the prize in hopes of providing a launchpad for their literary success.

Past winners include now-renowned authors Colson Whitehead, Ocean Vuong, Tony Kushner, Catherine Lacey, Alice McDermott, and Ling Ma — who have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Tony Awards for their writing.

Whiting Award winners generally aren’t household names yet, and that’s kind of the point. The $50,000 boost offers each 2026 recipient a chance to continue honing their craft, which the foundation says offers “a kaleidoscopic view of this moment — from the human cost of AI to the poetry of displacement, from Detroit to Kabul to the stage.”

This year’s 10 emerging authors also presented a kaleidoscope of genres to judges: nonfiction, fiction, poetry and drama.

Here are the winners of the 2026 Whiting Award:

(with commentary from the Whiting judging committee)

Negar Azimi (Nonfiction) 
Azimi “explores how individuals inhabit history and how history lives through them” in her work, which includes projects like Bidoun. The judging committee says Azimi “weaves together memory, place, and exile to create a compelling story of heartbreak; a story of the lives we lead and the many more we do not.”

Elaine Castillo (Fiction)
Elaine Castillo, author of the 2025 book MODERATION and her 2018 debut novel America is Not the Heart, “deftly translates worlds into words.” The judging committee says “her work is brave and demanding, grounding our sense of present and future, while her sharp observations make us laugh, question and regret, and offer a delicious modern critique of unhinged times.”

Karen Hao (Nonfiction)
Hao is an award-winning journalist who authored the 2025 book Empire of AI. The judging committee says her work “offers a clarifying perspective amid the AI mania and lays bare the profit-seeking egos driving it.” They add that “her writing is lucid and tenacious, revealing the hubris and moral bankruptcy of those who seek to alter the fabric of human existence.”

Hajar Hussaini (Poetry)
The author of Disbound: Poems writes poetry that “propels readers to consider what war destroys and what remains.” The judging committee says her poems show how “fragments can contain the entirety of times, places, and people we thought lost.”

Hilary Leichter (Fiction)
The author of the 2020 debut novel Temporary and 2023’s Terrace Story, “traces post-pandemic loss to our upended present.” The judging committee says “her writing is assured and radiant with a fluid imagination that shapes lush worlds, at once uncanny and beautiful.”

Lara Mimosa Montes (Fiction)
The author of The Time of the Novel (2025), THRESHOLES (2020) and The Somnambulist (2016) “adeptly slows time to explore interiority and liminal territories.” The judging committee says her work is “formally innovative, playing with the possibilities of narration, while being fully tangible and present.”

Brittany Rodgers (Poetry)
Rodgers, whose poetry of place “glows with profound intimacy and care for the communities she calls kin,” writes with an unabashed celebration of place, a home for motherhood, matrilineal struggle, kink, and the pastoral.

Alison C. Rollins (Poetry)
The author of the 2019 collection Library of Small Catastrophes and 2024’s Black Bell writes poetry that “possesses a familiarity across literary traditions,” infusing it with depth and striking immediacy. The judging committee says “her painstaking research closes the gap between past and future, contributing to a new way of seeing.”

Celine Song (Drama)
The screenwriter and director of the 2025 film Materialists and the 2023 romantic drama Past Lives “pushes the bounds of theater with her moving excavation of humanity and love.” The judging committee says “she peels away historical narrative, challenging audiences to explore what stories remain below the surface, what art is staged, and who gets to tell the story on their own terms.”

Carvell Wallace (Nonfiction)
The author of the 2024 memoir Another Word for Love writes work that is at once “revelatory and discreet.” The judging committee says it is a testament to “radical care, practicing vulnerability to transform ache and memory into tenderness.” They add the book is about “coming to terms with the odds and surviving them with grace, radiance, generosity, and spirit.”

Don’t worry if your Hogwarts acceptance letter got lost in the mail — a new “Harry Potter” experience will soon let you hop aboard the Hogwarts Express anyway.

Harry Potter: A Hogwarts Express Adventure will open at the Southern California Railway Museum this summer for guests to experience the Wizarding World rite of passage aboard a real moving train in the Inland Empire. The experience will run from July 24 through Sept. 27. Yes, that includes Back to Hogwarts Day on Sept. 1.

A Hogwarts Express Adventure will include a Platform 9¾-themed preboarding experience as well as House competitions and chants, spell-casting challenges and other interactive activities aboard the train. Guests will also be able to grab some themed treats from the trolley. The train ride will end at a Hogsmeade-inspired village where more food, beverages and merchandise will be available.

The Rail Events Inc. press release also teases a possible encounter with “a dark and mysterious force.” The company, also known for the Polar Express Train Ride, developed A Hogwarts Express Adventure along with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Experiences.

This is a big year for “Harry Potter” fans. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” a new television series based on author J.K. Rowling’s popular book series, is set to debut on HBO Max on Christmas Day. The show will introduce audiences to a new Golden Trio, portrayed by Dominic McLaughlin (Harry Potter), Alastair Stout (Ron Weasley) and Arabella Stanton (Hermione Granger), as they embark on their Hogwarts journey. (Rowling remains controversial for her views on trans women.)

Ticket sales for A Hogwarts Express Adventure will begin April 28, with prices starting at $77 for adults and $67 for children ages 2 to 11, depending on departure time.

Editor’s note: This is an update of the profile published in December of the great African musician Fela Kuti. The original post was published when it was announced that Kuti would become the first African musician ever awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Now this week, he is on the list of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees and again is a historic “first” — the first African musician to be inducted into the hall.

Fela Kuti, the Afrobeat pioneer and activist who died in 1997, is now holds two landmark honors.

On December 19, he became the first African musician ever awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, joining an elite group of legends like The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra — all recognized for making “creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.”

This week it was announced that he is one of the musicians who will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2026. He is being honored in the category of “musical influence.” The Hall of Fame paid this tribute: “Fela Kuti was a revolutionary voice who spoke out against injustice through his innovative music — provoking political change while infusing jazz, West African and soul music to pioneer the Afrobeat genre.”

He has long been acclaimed by his fellow African artists. “Fela Kuti’s music was a fearless voice of Africa — its rhythms carried truth, resistance and freedom, inspiring generations of African musicians to speak boldly through sound,” says the legendary Senegalese singer Youssou N’ Dour.

Nicknamed the “Black President” for his role as a political and cultural leader, Fela is one of the rarified artists who’s recognized by a single name. He saw huge success as a pioneer of the Afrobeat genre, with its multilayered and shifting syncopation, psychedelic horns and chants. He was never nominated for a Grammy during his lifetime — although his musician sons, Femi and Seun, and grandson Made, have received eight nominations collectively.

A really big sound

Fela embraced a massive sound. His band often swelled to more than 30 members (including backup singers and dancers) and featured two bass guitars and two baritone saxophones. He himself played saxophone, keyboards, guitar, drums and trumpet (his first instrument as a child). His emphasis on complex polyrhythms and the inclusion of traditional African instruments like the talking drum were revolutionary at the time — a rebellion against the dominance of Western pop and a marked effort to forge a post-colonial African identity.

From the start of his career, Fela aimed to reach a larger and Pan-African audience by singing almost exclusively in Nigerian Pidgin English (rather than his mother tongue, Yoruba, which doesn’t translate throughout most of the continent).

He did not play by the rules of the music biz. He expressed disdain for party tunes and love songs. He’d release as many as seven albums in a single year. And he refused to perform songs live once they’d been recorded.

His music broke new ground with songs that could stretch to 45 minutes. One of his most famous albums, Confusion, was composed of a lone tune broken into two sides, Confusion Pt. I and Confusion Pt. II — the first half entirely instrumental.

BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness) from Soweto, South Africa, the incendiary live band and 2023 winner of the WOMEX Artist Award, sent a statement to NPR: “Fela is our spiritual muse and if he didn’t pursue music without boundaries of song length and speaking his truth — even when it was putting his life in danger — we wouldn’t have had the guts to be ourselves without fear or favor.”

A political awakening — and repercussions

During a 10-month stay in Los Angeles in 1969, Fela befriended members of the Black Panther Party. Afterward, his music grew political. He became an outspoken opponent of Nigeria’s military dictatorship and of South African apartheid.

The year following his 1976 album Zombie’s scathing indictment of the Nigerian government, The New York Times reported that a force comprising 1,000 Nigerian military members burned Fela’s Lagos home and recording compound (including all his instruments and master recording tapes). Fela was beaten unconscious, and his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was thrown from an upstairs window and later died from the resulting injuries.

That album, Zombie, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame last year, becoming only the fourth record by an African artist among the 1,165 releases.

In 1979, Fela unsuccessfully ran for president of Nigeria. His political activism added to his high profile — and controversial history. He was arrested many times by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s military junta, including at Lagos airport while departing for a U.S. tour. He was sentenced to five years in prison and held for over a year. Amnesty International classified him as a “prisoner of conscience.” Fela was freed only after the Buhari regime was overthrown in August 1985.

Musical life after death

Fela succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1997. His older brother, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a pediatrician and AIDS activist who served as health minister for Nigeria, spread the word that Fela’s death was AIDS-related. According to Ransome-Kuti, Fela had believed that “all doctors were fabricating AIDS, including myself.”

Following that news, one of the nation’s largest daily papers reported that condom sales surged in Nigeria. Fela’s passing marked a turning point in bringing greater consciousness about the epidemic across Africa. It is estimated that over one million people attended his funeral.

Since his death, his music has carried on. A tribute album, Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti, was released in 2002, featuring such artists as Sade, D’Angelo, Nile Rodgers, Questlove and Taj Mahal. Profits went to organizations working to raise AIDS awareness. And in 2009, Jay-Z and Will Smith produced Fela!, a Broadway musical about Fela’s life that earned 11 Tony Award nominations.

For today’s African musicians and worldwide, he is both a legend and an inspiration.

Tunde Adebimpe, the Nigerian American actor (Rachel Getting Married, Twisters) and lead singer for Grammy-nominated band TV on the Radio, told NPR: “Fela for me is the chapter heading in my musical education. He is the originator who showed us music as a power move calling out corruption. Music that questions your psyche and health, worries for your ecosystem, gut checks your self-worth and pride, and keeps you lifted. And it moves nyash [ass].”

Four-time Grammy-nominated Malian singer Salif Keita puts it this way: “Brother Fela was a great influence for my music. I loved him very much. He was a brave man. His legacy is undisputed.”

Ian Brennan is a Grammy-winning music producer (Tinariwen, Parchman Prison Prayer, The Good Ones, West Virginia Snake Handler Revival) who has recorded over 50 records by international artists across five continents. He is the author of 10 books. His latest is Missing Music: Voices From Where the Dirt Roads End.