QUICK TAKES - Oct. 29, 2009

Ten emerging writers, their home countries ranging from Vietnam to the United States, have received prizes of $50,000 each.

The Whiting Writers’ Awards, given annually for “exceptional talent and promise in early career,” were announced Wednesday. The recipients included fiction writer Vu Tran, born in Vietnam and now living in Las Vegas, and poet Jay Hopler, a native of Puerto Rico who lives in Tampa, Fla.

Other winners were poets Jericho Brown and Joan Kane, playwright Rajiv Joseph (whose “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” made such an impact in L.A.), nonfiction authors Michael Meyer and Hugh Raffles, and fiction writers Adam Johnson, Nami Mun and Salvatore Scibona.