Michael Dahlie, a Minneapolis native, is a winner of this year's Whiting Award, a prestigious prize that recognizes 10 young writers for their talent and promise. The awards, which have been given annually since 1985, carry a $50,000 honorarium and have gone, in the past, to Michael Cunningham, Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff.

Dahlie's first novel, "A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living," won the PEN/Hemingway Award. His short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review and Tin House. The Whiting selection committee praised Dahlie's "splendid control, the entirely satisfying narrative shape of the novel." Dahlie lived in Minneapolis as a child, attending Jefferson Elementary School and moving with his parents at age 8. He lives in Indianapolis, where he is the Booth Tarkington writer-in-residence at Butler University.

LAURIE HERTZEL