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.
She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.
She makes no sound. She is always alone.
If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in
she leaves. She calls you Dear.
I was thinking of giving her my flowers.
Just now she came over and said,
‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’
She said, ‘No Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’
She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’
I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’
They had been watching Lena for a month. The sound technician, a barrel-chested man with whom he had not previously worked, had introduced himself simply as Bear. Bear recorded her telephone conversations, leaving him to photograph her comings and goings. In her file at the Bureau, there were many Lenas. She appeared in a slew of black-and-white pictures, bundled in a woolen coat, talking to the downstairs neighbor, inspecting potatoes and carrots at the vegetable market. On warmer days, she stretched beside the window, the sill like a barre, and he had frozen her in her contortions. When the damp wind sank its teeth until it pierced his bones, she stood at the shut window in a thick sweater sipping coffee from a shallow cup that she held in both hands. In the pictures she was usually looking out. He liked to think that she had caught sight of something she had been expecting.
ANGEL: Here’s your big chance, baby. What would you like to ask the Angel of the Lord?
MARISOL (Energized): Are you real? Are you true? Are you gonna make the Bronx safe for me? Is it true angels’ favorite food is Thousand Island dressing? Is it true your shit smells like mangoes and when you’re drunk you speak Portuguese?
ANGEL: Honey, last time I was drunk…
(Marisol gets a sudden, horrifying realization.)
MARISOL: Wait a minute – am I dead?
The movie is entertaining and intriguing. At four points during it I rotate my eyes to observe Rebecca. The monitor is mirrored on her glasses and behind them her eyes are very wide. Although I am a more experienced programmer, I am certain her ideas on the movie are more complex than mine.
Javier was crazy about tacos. He loved them the way some men love their women: a nice, hard, firm shell. While many men have fallen to the wayside on account of a woman, it is hard to imagine a taco unraveling a man the way it did Javier. After simple surgery to remove a cyst from his gallbladder, one of Javier’s friends snuck him a couple of hard-shelled tacos. He propped himself up in his bed, the green of his hospital pajamas matching the lettuce in his taco, smiled wide, and dug in. After a good meal, he thanked the Lord for his many blessings, including such good friends, then laid himself down to sleep never to wake again. The taco shell had ripped his stitches as it went down.
I love American newspapers, the way each section
is folded independently and believes it owns
the world. There’s this brief item in the inter-
national pages: the Chinese government has posted
signs in Tiananmen Square; forbidding laughter.
I’m sure the plastic surgeon would approve, he’d say
the Chinese will look young much longer, their faces
unnaturally smooth, but what I see (although
no photograph accompanies the story) is laughter
busting inside them. I go back to the sports section
and a closeup of a rookie in mind-swing, his face
keeping all the wrong emotions in check.
She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.
She makes no sound. She is always alone.
If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in
she leaves. She calls you Dear.
I was thinking of giving her my flowers.
Just now she came over and said,
‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’
She said, ‘No Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’
She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’
I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’
They had been watching Lena for a month. The sound technician, a barrel-chested man with whom he had not previously worked, had introduced himself simply as Bear. Bear recorded her telephone conversations, leaving him to photograph her comings and goings. In her file at the Bureau, there were many Lenas. She appeared in a slew of black-and-white pictures, bundled in a woolen coat, talking to the downstairs neighbor, inspecting potatoes and carrots at the vegetable market. On warmer days, she stretched beside the window, the sill like a barre, and he had frozen her in her contortions. When the damp wind sank its teeth until it pierced his bones, she stood at the shut window in a thick sweater sipping coffee from a shallow cup that she held in both hands. In the pictures she was usually looking out. He liked to think that she had caught sight of something she had been expecting.
ANGEL: Here’s your big chance, baby. What would you like to ask the Angel of the Lord?
MARISOL (Energized): Are you real? Are you true? Are you gonna make the Bronx safe for me? Is it true angels’ favorite food is Thousand Island dressing? Is it true your shit smells like mangoes and when you’re drunk you speak Portuguese?
ANGEL: Honey, last time I was drunk…
(Marisol gets a sudden, horrifying realization.)
MARISOL: Wait a minute – am I dead?
The movie is entertaining and intriguing. At four points during it I rotate my eyes to observe Rebecca. The monitor is mirrored on her glasses and behind them her eyes are very wide. Although I am a more experienced programmer, I am certain her ideas on the movie are more complex than mine.
Javier was crazy about tacos. He loved them the way some men love their women: a nice, hard, firm shell. While many men have fallen to the wayside on account of a woman, it is hard to imagine a taco unraveling a man the way it did Javier. After simple surgery to remove a cyst from his gallbladder, one of Javier’s friends snuck him a couple of hard-shelled tacos. He propped himself up in his bed, the green of his hospital pajamas matching the lettuce in his taco, smiled wide, and dug in. After a good meal, he thanked the Lord for his many blessings, including such good friends, then laid himself down to sleep never to wake again. The taco shell had ripped his stitches as it went down.
I love American newspapers, the way each section
is folded independently and believes it owns
the world. There’s this brief item in the inter-
national pages: the Chinese government has posted
signs in Tiananmen Square; forbidding laughter.
I’m sure the plastic surgeon would approve, he’d say
the Chinese will look young much longer, their faces
unnaturally smooth, but what I see (although
no photograph accompanies the story) is laughter
busting inside them. I go back to the sports section
and a closeup of a rookie in mind-swing, his face
keeping all the wrong emotions in check.