To close out 2009, we scanned the past year's Recent Winners listings for some of the stats on the awards we've announced in our pages. The grand total of prizes given in 2009 to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and literary translators is $9,486,425.
Fifty-five percent of winners announced in our pages during the past twelve months were female, and forty-five percent male. There were more female winners than male named in every issue with the exception of March/April 2009.
The majority of the year's funds were awarded in poetry, with over four-and-a-half-million dollars given, 47 percent of the total awards amount for the year. Fiction writers saw nearly 41 percent of prizes, approximately 3.9 million dollars. Creative nonfiction writers received about 9 percent of prize money, over eight hundred thousand dollars, and translators took home 3 percent of funds, a little less than three hundred thousand dollars.
Writers from all fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as a number of writers living abroad in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, received literary awards this past year.