Search all Winners

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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

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Selected winners

Kirsten Bakis

2004

Lives of the Monster Dogs

A Novel

The photo showed a dog, standing on its hind legs, being helped from the door of a helicopter by a serious-looking man in a down vest. The dog seemed to stand about the same height as the man, and looked like a Malamute. The strange thing about it, besides its larger-than-average size, was the fact that it was wearing a dark-colored jacket which looked like part of an old-fashioned military uniform, and a pair of spectacles, and that it appeared to have hands instead of front paws. In one of those gloved hands it held a cane, which was pointed at an awkward angle, probably because of the way the man was holding on to that foreleg just above the elbow. The other hand gripped the side of the helicopter doorway. The expression on the animal’s face was one of terror. Its lips were slightly parted, its ears were pointing straight backward, and its eyes were wide.

Josip Novakovich

1997

Apricots from Chernobyl

Essays

The police ask me to empty my pockets. I turn them inside out and lay my miserabilia on the table. Two policemen quite unashamedly feel my thighs and ass, which tickles me. With clinical concentration they examine the stuff on the table. It is an obscene invasion of my privacy, more so than if they had turned my asshole inside out and inspected it under a microscope—any microbiologist could tell you that there we are remarkably similar. In pockets turned inside out you can see how we differ.

Randall Kenan

1994

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

Stories

Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.

Damn.

Clifford Thompson

2013

Love for Sale and Other Essays

At my desk, with my pen, pencil, markers, ruler, and thick white paper, I was in command. And when I drew the superhero who was my alter-ego, I gave him—i.e., myself—what in all my shyness I didn’t have: a girlfriend. She was as pretty as my limited skills could make her. Her name was Laura.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan

2025

Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit: Essays

The Sade who joins you at the hotel restaurant is not the Sade who gave you all the love she got she gave you more than she could give she gave you love. But she is a Sade who, you realize after a bit of googling, can flex muscles in her leg that most people will never know about and who may be one of the best dancers in the world even though she went to school to be a doctor. She will talk to you about making paintings in Romania while you eat food that tastes like dreams of food.

A waiter whose persona seems to have been inspired by the Steve Martin hamburger scene in the remake of The Pink Panther keeps pouring wine. You win an argument about the name of a jazz biopic even though your sparring partner has spent some SERIOUS time with Wynton Marsalis. By the end of the day you will have heard stories about artists whose names you have searched for in the stacks of many libraries, like one that begins with “Romie called me one morning” and ends with a dick joke the butt of which is, somehow, the New York Times. You fall asleep in a blue room on a mattress that wants your lower back to just go ahead and peace out. But you feel like the number-one luckiest girl in the world.

Downstairs in the dark, Aunt Jemima smiles from the confines of a painting, giving everybody the middle finger.