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.
Gary was a big boy, ugly and pale, with a nose like a peeled potato. I’m not just saying that because my ex-wife slept with him once. We all slept around. She slept with Larry, too, but I don’t have anything bad to say about Larry. I myself almost slept with Larry, he was irresistible, a beautiful man. Gary and Larry—these names have been changed to protect the innocent, but not mine: I am guilty.
Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for
And flew out of the stream
It was not dreaming
It had no ambition but confusion
In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun
and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl
when it’s broiled
The Titanic is the one that got away.
By the time he was infamous enough to sell out bullfighting arenas, the Caruso C was a sort of burlesque number. He would inch to it from the frequencies below, nearly embrace the note, and then flat a bit before trumpeting, C! with full tenor fury. Toscanini chided him for grandstanding, but this in-and-out tease worked well with German and Latin American houses, which particularly enjoyed the punishment of a loud flirtation.
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.
MERRICK
(resumptive)
So that's why I'm running. To dismantle the institutions that have enslaved us and humiliated us and conned us out of our money for far too long.
WATSON
You're running for election to the government so you can dismantle the government?
MERRICK
(no hesitation, total confidence)
Yes.
WATSON smiles pleasantly.
WATSON
Cool. Good luck.
Some of the subjects covered during Gamal’s hour of talk: the great friendship they will have; the difficulty Gamal has accepting Ib’s name—he prefers to call him Ibrahim; the movies of Kaleemt Ishtwud; the language of Arabic, which Gamal will make Ib speak like one good Arab Man, which Gamal says is the language everyone in the world knows; felucca rides on the Nile; the English language, the greatest language on earth, which Ib will teach Gamal to speak like on good English Man; this great beauty the singer Paula Abdul, but what is she a servant of (abdul means “servant of”) and how can we make her visit our house which we will build together near the Pyramids; the Pyramids, which Gamal feels one moment are the great monuments of the world we know, the next moment, garbage heaps, where bad people sell bad things that do not make Egypt look good; the right of a man to marry a woman for a few weeks, a very necessary right, men are much stronger and fairer this way, men grow beards more quickly, men walk in straight lines.
Gary was a big boy, ugly and pale, with a nose like a peeled potato. I’m not just saying that because my ex-wife slept with him once. We all slept around. She slept with Larry, too, but I don’t have anything bad to say about Larry. I myself almost slept with Larry, he was irresistible, a beautiful man. Gary and Larry—these names have been changed to protect the innocent, but not mine: I am guilty.
Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for
And flew out of the stream
It was not dreaming
It had no ambition but confusion
In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun
and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl
when it’s broiled
The Titanic is the one that got away.
By the time he was infamous enough to sell out bullfighting arenas, the Caruso C was a sort of burlesque number. He would inch to it from the frequencies below, nearly embrace the note, and then flat a bit before trumpeting, C! with full tenor fury. Toscanini chided him for grandstanding, but this in-and-out tease worked well with German and Latin American houses, which particularly enjoyed the punishment of a loud flirtation.
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.
MERRICK
(resumptive)
So that's why I'm running. To dismantle the institutions that have enslaved us and humiliated us and conned us out of our money for far too long.
WATSON
You're running for election to the government so you can dismantle the government?
MERRICK
(no hesitation, total confidence)
Yes.
WATSON smiles pleasantly.
WATSON
Cool. Good luck.
Some of the subjects covered during Gamal’s hour of talk: the great friendship they will have; the difficulty Gamal has accepting Ib’s name—he prefers to call him Ibrahim; the movies of Kaleemt Ishtwud; the language of Arabic, which Gamal will make Ib speak like one good Arab Man, which Gamal says is the language everyone in the world knows; felucca rides on the Nile; the English language, the greatest language on earth, which Ib will teach Gamal to speak like on good English Man; this great beauty the singer Paula Abdul, but what is she a servant of (abdul means “servant of”) and how can we make her visit our house which we will build together near the Pyramids; the Pyramids, which Gamal feels one moment are the great monuments of the world we know, the next moment, garbage heaps, where bad people sell bad things that do not make Egypt look good; the right of a man to marry a woman for a few weeks, a very necessary right, men are much stronger and fairer this way, men grow beards more quickly, men walk in straight lines.