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.

Beautiful Province (Belle Province)
A Play

MR. GREEN: Two verbs! Granted, they are irregular. But that’s no excuse, for these forms —

 

Do. Not. Change.

 

They are immutable!

 

More reliable than the people in your lives. More stable than governments. More dependable than churches or philosophies. These verbs are your deliverance!

 

Commit these patterns to memory. Determine the person, the number, the tense. Then remember the form. That’s all there is. To conjugation.

 

Conjugation. Such a beautiful word. Such a beautiful act. 

Harlem Is Nowhere
A Journey to the Mecca of Black America

In this dream Harlem, the avenues are even wider and more grand. I visit elegant lounges that have mahogany fittings and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the avenue—striped silk curtains billow in the breeze. In that dream Harlem, that nowhere Harlem, I reach the campus of City College by ascending the face of a ragged cliff many times more treacherous than the steps of St. Nicholas Park. In these settings unfold various plots of which I am not quite the author.

The Internationalist
A Play

SARA

I don't think $20 is much for a bribe.

 

LOWELL

Isn't it? American? I was hoping it was a whole hell of a lot.

 

SARA

Maybe. Guys who work in airports make a lot of funny money different ways.

 

LOWELL

Oh but, oh, well. Yeah. Fuck. Well it was my first bribe.

Reading the Water
Poems

A planeload of insurance salesmen, blown off course,

Discovers a tribe who believe an elephant-

In-the-distance is the same size as a gnat-in-the-eye.

 

This should cause trouble in a hunt. But tribespeople

Merely flick the pesky trumpeter away,

While the gnat – felled by clouds of arrows – feeds

 

The tribe for weeks. Faced by a lion, tribesmen run

Until its head is small enough to squish. Muscular

Warriors are found dead, pierced by mosquito-needles

 

Ear-to-ear. Everything here is as it seems.

The stick-in-water, drawn out, remains crooked

As a boomerang. Mountain and molehill are identical.

 

Tragedies that crush Americans – love’s waterbed

Popping, parents dropped into the scalding pot of age-

Require only that the sufferer walk away. “It’s not so awful,”

 

Tribal healers say. “With every step, troubles shrink;

Their howling dwindles to a buzz; their fangs shrivel to the size

Of pollen grains. Reach out. Brush them away. You see?”

Dear Blackbird,
Poems

Whitman kept all the sleepers to himself but one, & she wasn’t just a demon

in the sack. When she wasn’t sleeping by daylight, she was the demon

slinging a house shoe at her children over the front seat of the Plymouth

while simultaneously steering it between the orgasmic, careening semis &

Beetle Bug Blue, Piddiddle, Beetle Bug Black.

Staggered Lights
Poems

A man and a woman

are lying together

listening to news of a war.

The radio dial

is the only light in the room.

Casualties are read out.

He thinks, “Those are people

I no longer have to love,”

and he touches her hair

and calls her name

but it sounds strange to her

like a stone left over

from a house already built.

Beautiful Province (Belle Province)
A Play

MR. GREEN: Two verbs! Granted, they are irregular. But that’s no excuse, for these forms —

 

Do. Not. Change.

 

They are immutable!

 

More reliable than the people in your lives. More stable than governments. More dependable than churches or philosophies. These verbs are your deliverance!

 

Commit these patterns to memory. Determine the person, the number, the tense. Then remember the form. That’s all there is. To conjugation.

 

Conjugation. Such a beautiful word. Such a beautiful act. 

Harlem Is Nowhere
A Journey to the Mecca of Black America

In this dream Harlem, the avenues are even wider and more grand. I visit elegant lounges that have mahogany fittings and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the avenue—striped silk curtains billow in the breeze. In that dream Harlem, that nowhere Harlem, I reach the campus of City College by ascending the face of a ragged cliff many times more treacherous than the steps of St. Nicholas Park. In these settings unfold various plots of which I am not quite the author.

The Internationalist
A Play

SARA

I don't think $20 is much for a bribe.

 

LOWELL

Isn't it? American? I was hoping it was a whole hell of a lot.

 

SARA

Maybe. Guys who work in airports make a lot of funny money different ways.

 

LOWELL

Oh but, oh, well. Yeah. Fuck. Well it was my first bribe.

Reading the Water
Poems

A planeload of insurance salesmen, blown off course,

Discovers a tribe who believe an elephant-

In-the-distance is the same size as a gnat-in-the-eye.

 

This should cause trouble in a hunt. But tribespeople

Merely flick the pesky trumpeter away,

While the gnat – felled by clouds of arrows – feeds

 

The tribe for weeks. Faced by a lion, tribesmen run

Until its head is small enough to squish. Muscular

Warriors are found dead, pierced by mosquito-needles

 

Ear-to-ear. Everything here is as it seems.

The stick-in-water, drawn out, remains crooked

As a boomerang. Mountain and molehill are identical.

 

Tragedies that crush Americans – love’s waterbed

Popping, parents dropped into the scalding pot of age-

Require only that the sufferer walk away. “It’s not so awful,”

 

Tribal healers say. “With every step, troubles shrink;

Their howling dwindles to a buzz; their fangs shrivel to the size

Of pollen grains. Reach out. Brush them away. You see?”

Dear Blackbird,
Poems

Whitman kept all the sleepers to himself but one, & she wasn’t just a demon

in the sack. When she wasn’t sleeping by daylight, she was the demon

slinging a house shoe at her children over the front seat of the Plymouth

while simultaneously steering it between the orgasmic, careening semis &

Beetle Bug Blue, Piddiddle, Beetle Bug Black.

Staggered Lights
Poems

A man and a woman

are lying together

listening to news of a war.

The radio dial

is the only light in the room.

Casualties are read out.

He thinks, “Those are people

I no longer have to love,”

and he touches her hair

and calls her name

but it sounds strange to her

like a stone left over

from a house already built.