Yiyun Li, Su Kwock Kim, and Charles D'Ambrosio have won 2006 Whiting Writers Awards, continuing a distinguished record by UI alumni in one of the most highly recognized award competitions for young writers. The awards are intended to honor and encourage young writers of significant promise in poetry, fiction, nonfiction and drama. While the Whiting Awards are not as well known to the general public as the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award, they have become predictors of future winners of the literary world's most prestigious prizes, and they have been a landmark of solid writing careers since their inception in 1985. All three authors studied at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Yiyun Li also earned an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program.