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.

The Afterlife of Objects
Poems

Outside, my grandfather wheeling

a pesticide tank

 

from tree to tree, spraying everything

with thick, white foam –

 

bark, leaf, apple flesh –

salting the garden

 

with handfuls of red sand, dissolving

aphid, Japanese beetle, horned tomato worm

 

as thick as rope. Gone

in an instant, emerging

 

from his fiberglass outbuilding shed, helving

an axe, bright blade, pine handle,

 

to eliminate

a dwarf peach weakened by nesting beetles.

 

O ordinary axe

House of Heroes
And Other Stories

My job here is a strange one. The description I found in the classifieds read: “Overnight counselor-in-residence for developmentally disabled teenagers with behavior problems.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But it went on to read: “Some meal preparation required; counselor is able to sleep during shift.”

 

At the time it seemed that it might suit me, the sleeping part in particular.

Each in a Place Apart
Poems

     I wanted for her sake to undo it,

I asked her to forget. There wouldn’t be

time for us since I was married. I’d made her want

another time, when, whole, impossibly together,

we’d rescue my avowal, which was a curse.

Though I asked her not to, she went on

waiting for that time and, by the tree where I

couldn’t get away to meet her, waiting

undismayed, heartsick, eighteen.

Green Squall
Poems

           And the sky!

Nooned with the steadfast blue enthusiasm

Of an empty nursery.

 

Crooked lizards grassed in yellow shade.

 

The grass was lizarding,

Green and on a rampage.

 

Shade tenacious in the crook of a bent stem.

 

Noon. This noon –

Skyed, blue and full of hum, full of bloom.

The grass was lizarding

Reasonable Creatures
Essays on Women and Feminism

For me, to be a feminist is to answer the question “Are women human?” with a yes. It is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it’s certainly not about trading personal liberty – abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression—for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It’s about justice, fairness and access to the broad range of human experience. It’s about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, “the family,” men.

Angels
A Novel

In the Oakland Greyhound all the people were dwarfs, and they pushed and shoved to get on the bus, even cutting in ahead of the two nuns, who were there first. The two nuns smiled sweetly at Miranda and Baby Ellen and played I-see-you behind their fingers when they’d taken their seats. But Jamie could sense that they found her make-up too thick, her pants too tight. They knew she was leaving her husband, and figured she’d turn for a living to whoring. She wanted to tell them what was what, but you can’t talk to a Catholic. The shorter nun carried a bright cut rose wrapped in her two hands.

The Afterlife of Objects
Poems

Outside, my grandfather wheeling

a pesticide tank

 

from tree to tree, spraying everything

with thick, white foam –

 

bark, leaf, apple flesh –

salting the garden

 

with handfuls of red sand, dissolving

aphid, Japanese beetle, horned tomato worm

 

as thick as rope. Gone

in an instant, emerging

 

from his fiberglass outbuilding shed, helving

an axe, bright blade, pine handle,

 

to eliminate

a dwarf peach weakened by nesting beetles.

 

O ordinary axe

House of Heroes
And Other Stories

My job here is a strange one. The description I found in the classifieds read: “Overnight counselor-in-residence for developmentally disabled teenagers with behavior problems.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But it went on to read: “Some meal preparation required; counselor is able to sleep during shift.”

 

At the time it seemed that it might suit me, the sleeping part in particular.

Each in a Place Apart
Poems

     I wanted for her sake to undo it,

I asked her to forget. There wouldn’t be

time for us since I was married. I’d made her want

another time, when, whole, impossibly together,

we’d rescue my avowal, which was a curse.

Though I asked her not to, she went on

waiting for that time and, by the tree where I

couldn’t get away to meet her, waiting

undismayed, heartsick, eighteen.

Green Squall
Poems

           And the sky!

Nooned with the steadfast blue enthusiasm

Of an empty nursery.

 

Crooked lizards grassed in yellow shade.

 

The grass was lizarding,

Green and on a rampage.

 

Shade tenacious in the crook of a bent stem.

 

Noon. This noon –

Skyed, blue and full of hum, full of bloom.

The grass was lizarding

Reasonable Creatures
Essays on Women and Feminism

For me, to be a feminist is to answer the question “Are women human?” with a yes. It is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it’s certainly not about trading personal liberty – abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression—for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It’s about justice, fairness and access to the broad range of human experience. It’s about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, “the family,” men.

Angels
A Novel

In the Oakland Greyhound all the people were dwarfs, and they pushed and shoved to get on the bus, even cutting in ahead of the two nuns, who were there first. The two nuns smiled sweetly at Miranda and Baby Ellen and played I-see-you behind their fingers when they’d taken their seats. But Jamie could sense that they found her make-up too thick, her pants too tight. They knew she was leaving her husband, and figured she’d turn for a living to whoring. She wanted to tell them what was what, but you can’t talk to a Catholic. The shorter nun carried a bright cut rose wrapped in her two hands.