Miami grad receives national writing award

Miami University alumnus Rajiv Joseph has received a $50,000 Whiting Writers’ Award for 2009, which recognizes extraordinary talent and promise and is one of the most coveted prizes for up-and-coming writers.

Joseph, a 1996 Miami graduate majoring in English (creative writing), received the award along with nine other young writers during a ceremony Oct. 28 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Joseph is playwright and the author of "Animals Out of Paper," produced at the Second Stage Theatre and published by Dramatists Play Service; "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," produced at the Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles and named Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts; and "Gruesome Playground Injuries," scheduled for production in 2010 at the Alley Theatre in Houston and at Washington’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

He has received a Paula Vogel Award from the Vineyard Theatre and has been a Kesselring, Lark Playwriting and Dramatists Guild Fellow. Joseph received his master's of fine arts degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He is a founding member of the Fire Department Theater Company and lecturer in NYU's Expository Writing Program. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal and now lives in Brooklyn.

The Whiting Writers' Awards have been given annually since 1985, awarding more than $6 million to 250 poets, fiction and nonfiction writers and playwrights.