Pour la 30ème édition de son prix, la Whiting Foundation a honoré dix jeunes écrivains « pour leur talent exceptionnel ». Dans la catégorie fiction, le prix a été décerné à Leopoldine Core qui publiera en 2016 son premier recueil de nouvelles, WHEN WATCHED :

WHEN WATCHED
by Leopoldine Core
Penguin, Fall 2016

“There is an incredible sense of place and character in her stories, a completely original world that one feels one is inhabiting, a feeling similar to the sensation of reading Paula Fox or Jane Bowles. I cannot think of another young writer I have come across in whom I have as much faith to make work that will be read, and read for a long time, as Leopoldine Core.” – Sheila Heti

Leopoldine Core’s stories take their energy from the dark. Animated by a variety of contrasting extremes – repression and hysteria, newly heated attractions and dulled repulsion, cautious approaches and staggered retreats – all of her characters are fending off versions of the abyss in their halting quests for something like understanding, peace. Two young college dropouts find complex solace in each other’s company while working as prostitutes in Tribeca; a long-married pair of poets takes a work-motivated road trip and angrily reaffirm longstanding suspicions; two young women go home together after meeting in AA and explain themselves to one another in unequal terms. Leopoldine is unafraid to turn the bright light of her immaculately refined lens on the darkest corners, and this collection announces a daring new voice.