Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Raymond Abbott Fiction 1985
Aria Aber Poetry 2020
André Aciman Nonfiction 1995
David Adjmi Drama 2010
Ellen Akins Fiction 1989
Daniel Alarcón Fiction 2004
Jeffery Renard Allen Fiction 2002
Jeffery Renard Allen Poetry 2002
Mindy Aloff Nonfiction 1987
Diannely Antigua Poetry 2020
Will Arbery Drama 2020
Elizabeth Arnold Poetry 2002
John Ash Poetry 1986
Negar Azimi Nonfiction 2026
Kirsten Bakis Fiction 2004
Catherine Barnett Poetry 2004
Clare Barron Drama 2017
Elif Batuman Nonfiction 2010
Jen Beagin Fiction 2017
Jo Ann Beard Nonfiction 1997
Joshua Bennett Poetry 2021
Mischa Berlinski Fiction 2008
Ciaran Berry Poetry 2012
Aaliyah Bilal Fiction 2024
Liza Birkenmeier Drama 2025
Sherwin Bitsui Poetry 2006
Scott Blackwood Fiction 2011
Brian Blanchfield Nonfiction 2016
Tommye Blount Poetry 2023
Judy Blunt Nonfiction 2001
Anne Boyer Poetry 2018
Claire Boyles Fiction 2022
Courtney A. Brkic Fiction 2003
Joel Brouwer Poetry 2001
Jericho Brown Poetry 2009

Selected winners

Yiyun Li
2006
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Stories

Several times a day Granny Lin bathes Old Tang: in the morning and before bedtime, and whenever he wets or dirties himself. The private bathroom is what Granny Lin likes best about her marriage. For all her life, she has used public bathrooms, fighting with other slippery bodies for the lukewarm water drizzling from the rusty showers. Now that she has a bathroom all to herself, she never misses any chance to use it.

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Mindy Aloff
1987
Hippo in a Tutu
Dancing in Disney Animation
Even in a traditional "princess" picture, such as the still-popular 1950 Cinderella, the scene with the most romantic magic—the Fred-and-Ginger buoyancy and sense of brimming anticipation—is not, as we would expect, Cinderella's waltz with the Prince in the ballroom. That we only get to glimpse from behind the courtiers watching it—during those moments when the dance isn't interrupted by comic business for secondary characters or by the couple themselves breaking off the dance merely to drink in each other's shadows. The accent is on their private discovery of their feelings, not on the public celebration of their newfound romance. The real dance energy, rather, surges forth in the designing, cutting, and assembly of the heroine's dress in her lonely bedroom by an exaltation of singing mice and birds: a solitary girl's fantasy. The Disney inspirational artist for Cinderella, as for many animated features of the 1950s, was the brilliant and thoughtful painter Mary Blair. Although Blair was frequently heartbroken by what she viewed as the mistranslation of her concepts in the finished films—a feeling that seems to be embodied in the moment when Cinderella's wicked stepmother and stepsisters tear her dress to shreds—throughout the picture you can still see evidence of Blair's deeply unconventional ideas of how stories can be told through synecdoche (key details made to stand for a larger whole) and emotions represented through color and shifts in proportion.
 
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Steven Dunn
2021
Potted Meat
A Novel

HOME IS WHERE

I peek from the slit
between my forearms.
Them. They come.
Eyes in all the heads glow. 
The flow
melts my arm flesh
Burgundy vessels drip
from bone.

The graveyard this time of year is nice. Damp orange yellow red leaves pile at the headstones for pillows. Place my head in leaves. Soil moist and black like chocolate cake and taste like worms. Arms spread legs spread wind crawls up my pants leg to pocket soft backs of knees. Slightly arched back anchors shoulders to my throat, jaw, head. Eyes fixed to the blue grey. Meanwhile. An old deer limps over, sits like a dog, licks my shoes.

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Daniel Hall
1998
Strange Relation
Poems

He sent this key from Florida.

I think. A key to what?

I tried the car, the trucks,

tried every door – nothing fit.

My wife thought it was his idea

of a joke. I never got his jokes.

 

Not a word from him, just things:

a blank postcard from Colorado Springs;

a snapshot of himself from Aspen,

arm in arm with somebody, but

both faces had been scissored out.

A sign above the bar said SHIT HAPPENS.

 

Eugene, Spokane… He’s telephone,

collect, and I knew it was him,

though he always used a different name.

At times enough to make you laugh:

Call from Hans, Ricardo, Jeff,

will you accept? Yes. Dial tone.

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Hansol Jung
2018
Wild Goose Dreams
A Play

​​

CHORUS

-   Search: Husband affair asset division.

-   Askkorealaw dot com Q and A

- Q. My dirty husband is sexing with our daughter’s tutor. Will I get rich if I divorce him or should I make him suffer?

-   A. Make him suffer.

 

MINSUNG

Although, my wife and daughter live in America, I don’t think they’d know if I lit myself on fire,

how will they know that I’m having an affair?

That was a joke.

They call us the goose fathers, I could look that up for you.

 

CHORUS

-   Search: Goose father origin

-   Wikipedia Korea

 

MINSUNG

Aha.

 

CHORUS

-   The goose father is a Korean man who works in Korea while his wife and children stay in an English-speaking country for the sake of the children’s education. / The term is

 

MINSUNG

The term is inspired by the fact that geese migrate, just as the goose dad must travel a great distance to see his family.

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Hanna Pylväinen
2012
We Sinners
A Novel

Her plan had been to clean in the middle of the night, so her mother would wake to an empty kitchen sink, but as she stood in the foyer, the bathroom fan beating loudly and uselessly, the mess before her made her want to cry; being in a family of eleven made her want to cry, the way someone had soaked up the dog’s pee but not thrown away the paper towel, the way responsibility divided by eleven meant no one was really responsible.

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