Tommye Blount, a 2013 graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, has been selected as a 2023 Whiting Award winner.  The foundation gives $50,000 each to 10 exceptional emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.

Blount was recognized for his poetry collection, “Fantasia for the Man in Blue,” which “plunges into characters like a miner with a headlamp; desire, wit, and a dose of menace temper his precision.”

The prizes are designed to recognize excellence and promise in a spectrum of emerging talent, giving most winners their first chance to devote themselves full time to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work.

Tommye Blount grew up in Detroit, Michigan and earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He is the author of the poetry collection “Fantasia for the Man in Blue” (2020) and the chapbook “What Are We Not For” (2016). “Fantasia for the Man in Blue” was a 2020 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry. Blount has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem, and Kresge Arts. He lives in Novi, Michigan.