NEW YORK - Ten emerging writers, their home countries ranging from Vietnam to the United States, each have received a $50,000 prize.

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, Florida.

The other winners were poets Jericho Brown and Joan Kane, playwright Rajiv Joseph, nonfiction authors Michael Meyer and Hugh Raffles, and fiction writers Adam Johnson, Nami Mun and Salvatore Scibona, whose novel "The End" was a National Book Award finalist in 2008.

The awards, presented by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, were founded in 1985. Previous winners include such Pulitzer Prize winners as Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Cunningham and Jorie Graham.