Whiting Award Winners

Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.

Combing the Snakes from His Hair
Poems

Bristling outward

his sadism roots him deepest.

Some will hurt whomever they choose.

 

God-headed and radiant

            but shimmering little to offer.

Don’t build your bed of crisis

            or lie on the down of his ire.

Out of Egypt
A Memoir

People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.

Heroes of the Fourth Turning
A Play

KEVIN
I don’t understand anything you’re saying
 
TERESA
I’m sorry this sucked. Sorry. Sorry. I’ve stopped being able to lie. Don’t tear yourself apart over this. There’s a war coming, dude. 
 
KEVIN
What
 
TERESA
There’s a war coming. And I want you to be on the right side. I want you to be strong enough to fight. Remember your roots. You went to a school where you got wilderness training, where you spoke conversational Latin and locked your phone in a safe for four years and rode horses and built igloos and memorized poems while scaling mountains, and you were strong and you were one of us, and now look at you, you’re a pale American soy boy. 
 
KEVIN
A pale what
 
TERESA
Just make a decision not to be weak anymore, and stick to it.
 

Grief Hotel
A Play

WINN – How’s Melba?

EM – She told me she could see the afterlife.

WINN – What’s it like?

EM – Or my afterlife. She said that I would be a few other things when I die, that my cells have tiny souls so when I am a piece of cheese and a pigeon, I will still be me, but my consciousness will be broken down into smaller bits.

WINN – Does that feel happy to you?

EM – I don’t care. I’ll be like a deconstructed sandwich. / Or baby.

The Septembers of Shiraz
A Novel

“He says, why should some people live like kings and the rest like rats? And why should the wealthy, enamored with Europe and the West, dictate how the whole country should dress, talk, live? What if we like our chadors and our Koran? What if we want our own mullahs to rule us, not that saint – what’s his name?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, trying to remember the name. “ Morteza told me he is worshipped in Europe… I know! Saint Laurent, or something like that…”

 

“Yves Saint Laurent?” Farnaz laughs. “He’s not a saint, Habibeh. He’s a designer. That’s just his name.”

The World's Room
Poems

Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:

Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.

 

Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.

Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.

 

Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.

The target is yourself becoming brave.

 

Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –

Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.

Combing the Snakes from His Hair
Poems

Bristling outward

his sadism roots him deepest.

Some will hurt whomever they choose.

 

God-headed and radiant

            but shimmering little to offer.

Don’t build your bed of crisis

            or lie on the down of his ire.

Out of Egypt
A Memoir

People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.

Heroes of the Fourth Turning
A Play

KEVIN
I don’t understand anything you’re saying
 
TERESA
I’m sorry this sucked. Sorry. Sorry. I’ve stopped being able to lie. Don’t tear yourself apart over this. There’s a war coming, dude. 
 
KEVIN
What
 
TERESA
There’s a war coming. And I want you to be on the right side. I want you to be strong enough to fight. Remember your roots. You went to a school where you got wilderness training, where you spoke conversational Latin and locked your phone in a safe for four years and rode horses and built igloos and memorized poems while scaling mountains, and you were strong and you were one of us, and now look at you, you’re a pale American soy boy. 
 
KEVIN
A pale what
 
TERESA
Just make a decision not to be weak anymore, and stick to it.
 

Grief Hotel
A Play

WINN – How’s Melba?

EM – She told me she could see the afterlife.

WINN – What’s it like?

EM – Or my afterlife. She said that I would be a few other things when I die, that my cells have tiny souls so when I am a piece of cheese and a pigeon, I will still be me, but my consciousness will be broken down into smaller bits.

WINN – Does that feel happy to you?

EM – I don’t care. I’ll be like a deconstructed sandwich. / Or baby.

The Septembers of Shiraz
A Novel

“He says, why should some people live like kings and the rest like rats? And why should the wealthy, enamored with Europe and the West, dictate how the whole country should dress, talk, live? What if we like our chadors and our Koran? What if we want our own mullahs to rule us, not that saint – what’s his name?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, trying to remember the name. “ Morteza told me he is worshipped in Europe… I know! Saint Laurent, or something like that…”

 

“Yves Saint Laurent?” Farnaz laughs. “He’s not a saint, Habibeh. He’s a designer. That’s just his name.”

The World's Room
Poems

Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:

Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.

 

Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.

Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.

 

Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.

The target is yourself becoming brave.

 

Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –

Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.