The Rona Jaffe Foundation has announced the six winners of its 2016 Writers’ Awards, which are awarded annually to emerging women writers to recognize “the special contributions women writers make to our culture and society.” Rona Jaffe (1931–2005), who wrote sixteen books in her lifetime, established the awards program in 1995, which has since awarded over $2 million to emerging women writers.

This year’s winners include Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas, Danielle Geller, Jamey Hatley, Ladee Hubbard, Airea D. Matthews, and Asako Serizawa, whose bios you can read at the Rona Jaffe Foundation website. Each winner will receive a grant of $30,000 to cover “specific purposes [such] as child care, research, and related travel costs.”

Last year, the Writers’ Award winners included Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Amanda Rea, Natalie Haney Tilghman, Vanessa Hua, Meehan Crist, and Ashley M. Jones, and past recipients have included Solmaz Sharif, Olivia Clare, Eileen Pollack, ZZ Packer, Eula Biss, Tracy K. Smith, Amy Leach, Sara Elizabeth Johnson, and Kristin Dombek, among others.

The 2016 winners will formally accept their awards at a private ceremony on September 15 in New York City; they’ll read in New York University’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series the following night at 7:00 p.m. at the Vernon Writers House (58 West 10^th Street).

The Rona Jaffe Foundation does not accept unsolicited applications for the award.