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

Phillip B. Williams
2017
Thief in the Interior
Poems

Rachel comes to the porch holding herself and asking for

my uncle. We say he gone to the store but he’s years dead.

She keeps holding on to herself like her body remembers

what her mind lost. When he get back, tell him he owe me $5.

We offer to pay. She says, No. Tell him.

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Padgett Powell
1986
Edisto
A Novel

The important thing, I suppose, is that this weekend was the first one we spent that wasn’t entirely at the state fair or big-brother Disneyland. It was the first time Daddy sort of ignored me like the Doctor, and I must confess that I had a better time than ever before on these custody junkets. It’s heavy pressure, you know, to find your role four days out of the month, a little two-day run every two weeks with no rehearsal. I suppose it was no fun for him, either, being the director as well as actor and still not getting it right. But that weekend he seemed a lot more regular in a way it’s hard to describe. I think that woman (Mike’s mother) looked sexy, for one thing, but that is strictly my unhaired opinion. At school the word is, you don’t know what girls really are until you have hair, kind of a Samson thing, I guess.

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Raymond Abbott
1985
That Day in Gordon
A Novel

Still behind him was that damn coyote. A determined critter, he was. He hadn’t caught sight of him for at least an hour, but he felt his presence out there. At first he had feared him. Now he didn’t. If circumstances were different he might have welcomed the company of a coyote on a lonely walk on a snowy night. At best, the coyote’s presence was disconcerting. He was puzzled. Why would a coyote be so determined? Poor animal. It had been such a hard winter for man and beast.

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Michael R. Jackson
2019
A Strange Loop

THOUGHT #3

Tyler Perry knows how to bring everything together wit all the stories? And all the singing? And all the different people talking?

 

THOUGHT #1

And Tyler Perry don’t never forget to bring in the spirit’ch’alities.

 

THOUGHT #2

‘Cause Tyler Perry loves his Mama—

 

THOUGHT #6

And the Lord—

 

THOUGHT #1

So write a nice, clean Tyler Perry-like gospel play for your parents please?

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Amy Leach
2010
Things That Are
Essays

In the seventeenth century, his Holiness the Pope adjudged beavers to be fish. In retrospect, that was a zoologically illogical decision; but beavers were not miffed at being changed into fish. They decided not to truckle their new specification, not to be perfect fish, textbook fish; instead they became fanciful fish, the first to have furry babies, the first to breathe air and the first fish to build for themselves commodious conical fortresses in the water.

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Atsuro Riley
2012
Romey's Order

Come the marrow-hours when he couldn’t sleep,

the boy river-brinked and chorded.

 

Mud-bedded himself here in the root-mesh; bided.

Sieved our alluvial sounds—

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