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.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
A Novel

The game consisted of a single question: If you had to fall in love with (by which Paul meant have sex with) one person in this elevator, who would it be? He played the elevator game in every class he ever took, on the bus, in straight bars, in subway cars, in waiting rooms, free clinics, the line at a movie theater, dinner out with a group of friends-of-friends. He sometimes played the elevator game with Jane, a silent communion of eyebrows and squints or—more likely—a fast-talking, low-murmured loop around the bar, marking targets. Jane was his favorite companion for this; she didn’t judge. Most of his life he had played alone.

War by Candlelight
Stories

In Lima, dying is the local sport. Those who die in phantasmagoric fashion, violently, spectacularly, are celebrated in the fifty-cent papers beneath appropriately gory headlines: DRIVER GETS MELON BURST or NARCO SHOOTOUT, BYSTANDERS EAT LEAD. I don’t work at that kind of newspaper, but if I did, I would write those headlines too. Like my father, I never refuse work. I’ve covered drug busts, double homicides, fires at discos and markets, traffic accidents, bombs in shopping centers. I’ve profiled corrupt politicians, drunken has-been soccer players, artists who hate the world. But I’ve never covered the unexpected death of a middle-aged worker in a public hospital. Mourned by his wife. His child. His other wife. Her children.

 

My father’s dying was not news.

HULL

Though I cannot lavish praise on stamina
            alone, I must acknowledge a femme

            

            fortitude. Last night, I tell myself,
a misstep at battery’s expense

 

so as to never consider the sentience
of a pleasure machine.

 

How her trembling must have lullabied
                   my drunk tongue the intricacies

                  

                   of sexual decorum even in sleep,
how she may have throbbed

 

all night beside me, anticipating her
own reciprocal and tender invasion.

What Love Comes To
New & Selected Poems

The dog is God.

It knows it is God.

It is God living with God.

Even in the rain,

the esters, the pheromones,

calligraphy of the sacred,

the great head points into the wind,

the blood thrashes in the thick veins.

The language of the feces, urine,

species, rut, offal, decay –

nothing is hidden from the dog,

who keeps its own counsel,

leading you by the leash.

Beauty's Daughter, Monster, The Gimmick
Three Plays

BLIND LOUIE: Lissen I’m a be straight up with you, Diane, I need money, as much as you can spare - now – see, I’m puttin’ my shit out heah – ‘cause I’m sick, man, real sick – I gotta go cop – I’m sorry to be like this but I can lie and say I need it for somethin’ else y’know stand here, and try and cop a plea and perpetrate a fraud. I’m not doin’ that, Diane. I’m a junkie.

The Sorrows of Others: Stories

Prancing down the building’s stairs, Hui concentrated again on the boy who had stopped returning her calls. Acknowledging another’s pain obscured one’s own. Hui wasn’t ready yet to accept that. From the window, Meng watched her granddaughter walk up the tree-lined street. The old woman’s longing was like that of a child, featuring prominently in her eyes, which captured that spirit from her youth. It would have been easy for anyone to picture what she had looked like back then, if anyone had been there.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
A Novel

The game consisted of a single question: If you had to fall in love with (by which Paul meant have sex with) one person in this elevator, who would it be? He played the elevator game in every class he ever took, on the bus, in straight bars, in subway cars, in waiting rooms, free clinics, the line at a movie theater, dinner out with a group of friends-of-friends. He sometimes played the elevator game with Jane, a silent communion of eyebrows and squints or—more likely—a fast-talking, low-murmured loop around the bar, marking targets. Jane was his favorite companion for this; she didn’t judge. Most of his life he had played alone.

War by Candlelight
Stories

In Lima, dying is the local sport. Those who die in phantasmagoric fashion, violently, spectacularly, are celebrated in the fifty-cent papers beneath appropriately gory headlines: DRIVER GETS MELON BURST or NARCO SHOOTOUT, BYSTANDERS EAT LEAD. I don’t work at that kind of newspaper, but if I did, I would write those headlines too. Like my father, I never refuse work. I’ve covered drug busts, double homicides, fires at discos and markets, traffic accidents, bombs in shopping centers. I’ve profiled corrupt politicians, drunken has-been soccer players, artists who hate the world. But I’ve never covered the unexpected death of a middle-aged worker in a public hospital. Mourned by his wife. His child. His other wife. Her children.

 

My father’s dying was not news.

HULL

Though I cannot lavish praise on stamina
            alone, I must acknowledge a femme

            

            fortitude. Last night, I tell myself,
a misstep at battery’s expense

 

so as to never consider the sentience
of a pleasure machine.

 

How her trembling must have lullabied
                   my drunk tongue the intricacies

                  

                   of sexual decorum even in sleep,
how she may have throbbed

 

all night beside me, anticipating her
own reciprocal and tender invasion.

What Love Comes To
New & Selected Poems

The dog is God.

It knows it is God.

It is God living with God.

Even in the rain,

the esters, the pheromones,

calligraphy of the sacred,

the great head points into the wind,

the blood thrashes in the thick veins.

The language of the feces, urine,

species, rut, offal, decay –

nothing is hidden from the dog,

who keeps its own counsel,

leading you by the leash.

Beauty's Daughter, Monster, The Gimmick
Three Plays

BLIND LOUIE: Lissen I’m a be straight up with you, Diane, I need money, as much as you can spare - now – see, I’m puttin’ my shit out heah – ‘cause I’m sick, man, real sick – I gotta go cop – I’m sorry to be like this but I can lie and say I need it for somethin’ else y’know stand here, and try and cop a plea and perpetrate a fraud. I’m not doin’ that, Diane. I’m a junkie.

The Sorrows of Others: Stories

Prancing down the building’s stairs, Hui concentrated again on the boy who had stopped returning her calls. Acknowledging another’s pain obscured one’s own. Hui wasn’t ready yet to accept that. From the window, Meng watched her granddaughter walk up the tree-lined street. The old woman’s longing was like that of a child, featuring prominently in her eyes, which captured that spirit from her youth. It would have been easy for anyone to picture what she had looked like back then, if anyone had been there.