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.
With careless hands a child kills an ant. Flies are far trickier, though once caught, they have little chance. And, if darting birds don’t grab them first, butterflies die natural deaths; few people—collectors excepted—willfully still such tremulous beauty.
The family lined up to kiss me. With Guillaume and then Odile, I aimed for the wrong cheek and ended up butting noses with Guillaume and nearly kissing Odile on the lips, which seemed to horrify her and her profound sense of propriety. Before her turn, Lola told me, “Right cheek first,” which clarified everything, and I was prepared for Nicole. No one else seemed to be bothered that Nicole wore no shirt. As we kissed, I smelled makeup and removers, nail polish and toothpaste, and the lingering odor of her younger children—sour milk and butter cookies.
THE PLEASING HOUR © 1999 by Lily King; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.
All right, maybe I do. Maybe I do talk first and think later. Yes, it’s true, I admit it freely. It’s because I’m from the city. Now, you can say to me, Glory B., it’s no crime to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, to figure out how it relates to the topic being discussed, or if it does at all, or if what you’re going to say has the slightest factual basis whatsoever. I’ve got that argument down cold, because listen, words are my music. When I talk, I improvise. It’s not so much what I’m saying as how it sounds. Take jazz, all right, let’s use jazz as an analogy, parallels are always good. Now, what I mean is, what—do you think every time Bird sat down to blow he had the whole musical score right in front of him? Did he have the whole thing thought out? He did not. Well, he probably did not, I’m not entirely familiar with the man’s work, but probably, most likely he improvised is what I’m saying.
My grandmother owned a valise in which she carried all her possessions, but the stories she told were also possessions. The stories were fantastic, yet I believed them. She said that when she was young fireflies had invaded her town, so the whole town was lighted even during the nighttime. She said she had been told that the summer she was born, strange clouds passed through the sky. Every night for seven nights, a different cloud. The clouds all had a strange glow, as if someone had taken the moon and stretched it into a cloud shape. Those seven moon-clouds, she said, had been a lucky omen. As she spoke, she always gestured a great deal, so the background to her stories would be the soft tinkling of the bell we had bought her.
VANESSA: Have you ever met a black woman…you know…in like, real life that talks like that?
GUS: I’m sure I have.
VANESSA: I see.
GUS: That’s why I think this matters so much. My work is really interrogating my own interiority. But having you present my work, I’m being more true to myself by exposing my inner self through you. Creating a real life version of …the black woman inside me. To be enjoyed by all. I want her voice to be heard. I want to create her with you.
VANESSA: Oh my god. I just read an article about this in The Atlantic. What did they call it? Uhph—Racial Tourism! That’s it!
GUS: That’s a new one.
VANESSA: No it’s like…“Let me play double-dutch with the black girls on the playground cause they make me feel all empowered and fierce. They can teach me fun comebacks and how to wag my finger and I can be just as fierce and fabulous as them, but without the burden of actually being a black girl.” I got that right?
GUS: Whoa…You don’t know me.
VANESSA: I don’t.
GUS: I’m not a racist.
VANESSA: This is really awkward for you.
A friend asks, “What are you waiting for?
The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”
Maybe I am the straw.
Maybe I am hay. I made a list of rhyming words:
Bray, flay, array.
They all seemed to relate to farms, decaying things,
gray days, dismay.
I am recently reckless about making a display
of my unhappiness. Perhaps you may survey it.
Perhaps I may stray from it, go to the wrong home
by accident and say, “Oh! Here already?”
You know I’m fraying and just watch it.
You don’t even try to braid me together.
With careless hands a child kills an ant. Flies are far trickier, though once caught, they have little chance. And, if darting birds don’t grab them first, butterflies die natural deaths; few people—collectors excepted—willfully still such tremulous beauty.
The family lined up to kiss me. With Guillaume and then Odile, I aimed for the wrong cheek and ended up butting noses with Guillaume and nearly kissing Odile on the lips, which seemed to horrify her and her profound sense of propriety. Before her turn, Lola told me, “Right cheek first,” which clarified everything, and I was prepared for Nicole. No one else seemed to be bothered that Nicole wore no shirt. As we kissed, I smelled makeup and removers, nail polish and toothpaste, and the lingering odor of her younger children—sour milk and butter cookies.
THE PLEASING HOUR © 1999 by Lily King; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.
All right, maybe I do. Maybe I do talk first and think later. Yes, it’s true, I admit it freely. It’s because I’m from the city. Now, you can say to me, Glory B., it’s no crime to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, to figure out how it relates to the topic being discussed, or if it does at all, or if what you’re going to say has the slightest factual basis whatsoever. I’ve got that argument down cold, because listen, words are my music. When I talk, I improvise. It’s not so much what I’m saying as how it sounds. Take jazz, all right, let’s use jazz as an analogy, parallels are always good. Now, what I mean is, what—do you think every time Bird sat down to blow he had the whole musical score right in front of him? Did he have the whole thing thought out? He did not. Well, he probably did not, I’m not entirely familiar with the man’s work, but probably, most likely he improvised is what I’m saying.
My grandmother owned a valise in which she carried all her possessions, but the stories she told were also possessions. The stories were fantastic, yet I believed them. She said that when she was young fireflies had invaded her town, so the whole town was lighted even during the nighttime. She said she had been told that the summer she was born, strange clouds passed through the sky. Every night for seven nights, a different cloud. The clouds all had a strange glow, as if someone had taken the moon and stretched it into a cloud shape. Those seven moon-clouds, she said, had been a lucky omen. As she spoke, she always gestured a great deal, so the background to her stories would be the soft tinkling of the bell we had bought her.
VANESSA: Have you ever met a black woman…you know…in like, real life that talks like that?
GUS: I’m sure I have.
VANESSA: I see.
GUS: That’s why I think this matters so much. My work is really interrogating my own interiority. But having you present my work, I’m being more true to myself by exposing my inner self through you. Creating a real life version of …the black woman inside me. To be enjoyed by all. I want her voice to be heard. I want to create her with you.
VANESSA: Oh my god. I just read an article about this in The Atlantic. What did they call it? Uhph—Racial Tourism! That’s it!
GUS: That’s a new one.
VANESSA: No it’s like…“Let me play double-dutch with the black girls on the playground cause they make me feel all empowered and fierce. They can teach me fun comebacks and how to wag my finger and I can be just as fierce and fabulous as them, but without the burden of actually being a black girl.” I got that right?
GUS: Whoa…You don’t know me.
VANESSA: I don’t.
GUS: I’m not a racist.
VANESSA: This is really awkward for you.
A friend asks, “What are you waiting for?
The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”
Maybe I am the straw.
Maybe I am hay. I made a list of rhyming words:
Bray, flay, array.
They all seemed to relate to farms, decaying things,
gray days, dismay.
I am recently reckless about making a display
of my unhappiness. Perhaps you may survey it.
Perhaps I may stray from it, go to the wrong home
by accident and say, “Oh! Here already?”
You know I’m fraying and just watch it.
You don’t even try to braid me together.