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.
This is the address to the station that be playin the news, she say. Imma write to them and they gonna do a story on us.
I’m like, Yo, Kandese, that’s a good idea.
My mama put on the news every night. I didn’t know you could send them letters.
Ain’t no news cameras comin down here, Bernita say. Cops don’t even come here.
She love rainin on parades.
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.
I’ll make you a saint
from an unblemished code book
that must be read
in a German restaurant
where beer is served in glasses
wrapped in brown leather
when the cuckoo strikes twelve
this will be the moment
of ascension
“The American girl will judge the leg contest!” they announced. I was still hoping that I had misunderstood them, even as German techno music was turned on and all the boys in the camp, ages eight to fourteen, were paraded out behind a screen that hid their bodies from the waist up; identifying numbers had been pinned to their shorts. I was given a clipboard with a form on which to rate their legs on a scale from one to ten. Gripped by panic, I stared at the clipboard. Nothing in either my life experience or my studies had prepared me to judge an adolescent boys’ leg contest. Finally the English teacher, who appeared to understand my predicament, whispered to me some scores of her own devising, and I wrote them on the form as if I had thought of them myself.
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.
Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:
Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.
Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.
Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.
Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.
The target is yourself becoming brave.
Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –
Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.
This is the address to the station that be playin the news, she say. Imma write to them and they gonna do a story on us.
I’m like, Yo, Kandese, that’s a good idea.
My mama put on the news every night. I didn’t know you could send them letters.
Ain’t no news cameras comin down here, Bernita say. Cops don’t even come here.
She love rainin on parades.
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.
I’ll make you a saint
from an unblemished code book
that must be read
in a German restaurant
where beer is served in glasses
wrapped in brown leather
when the cuckoo strikes twelve
this will be the moment
of ascension
“The American girl will judge the leg contest!” they announced. I was still hoping that I had misunderstood them, even as German techno music was turned on and all the boys in the camp, ages eight to fourteen, were paraded out behind a screen that hid their bodies from the waist up; identifying numbers had been pinned to their shorts. I was given a clipboard with a form on which to rate their legs on a scale from one to ten. Gripped by panic, I stared at the clipboard. Nothing in either my life experience or my studies had prepared me to judge an adolescent boys’ leg contest. Finally the English teacher, who appeared to understand my predicament, whispered to me some scores of her own devising, and I wrote them on the form as if I had thought of them myself.
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.
Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:
Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.
Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.
Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.
Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.
The target is yourself becoming brave.
Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –
Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.