Fiction writers Lydia Peelle '00 and Rattawut Lapcharoensap '01 are among the winners of the 2010 Whiting Writers' Awards, one of the most coveted prizes for up-and-coming writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

The $50,000 awards honor 10 young writers each year for their extraordinary talent and promise. The awards were presented Oct. 27 at a ceremony in New York City.

An English major at Cornell, Peelle has won two Pushcart Prizes and an O. Henry Award and has been included twice in "Best New American Voices." She has also published stories in Granta, Orion, The Sun and other publications. Her short story collection "Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing" was published in 2009.

"These are very dark stories; her vision is severe," the Whiting selectors noted. "While she never confronts it didactically, her sorrow about what we are doing to ourselves and to our planet is overwhelming. The scope of her vision takes in a great sweep of life in the present, but is also steeped in a very present sense of history. ... These stories -- while working perfectly as short stories -- suggest the kind of epic vision usually found in novels."

Born in Boston, Peelle lives in Nashville, Tenn., and is writing a novel.

Lapcharoensap was a College Scholar at Cornell. His 2004 short story collection "Sightseeing" won the Asian American Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

His work has appeared in the anthologies "Best New American Voices" and "Best American Non-Required Reading" and in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story and other literary publications. In 2007 Granta included him among its "Best of Young American Novelists."

Lapcharoensap writes "with a depth of emotion, of tenderness really, and fluent descriptive detail," the Whiting selectors wrote. "We like the access he provides to a world we know nothing about ... and the way he manages to maintain an edgy tone without being off‑putting or overdoing it. ... We admire his fidelity to the short form in these stories -- he does not stretch material that oughtn't be stretched."

Born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok, he lives in Laramie, Wyo., where he is working on a novel and is a visiting writer in the University of Wyoming MFA program.

Since its inception in 1985, the Whiting Foundation Writers' Program has awarded more than $6 million to 250 writers. Past recipients include Denis Johnson, William T. Vollman, David Foster Wallace and Manuel Muñoz, MFA '98, a 2008 Whiting Award recipient.

Information: http://www.whitingfoundation.org.