Search All Winners

Name 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

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.

Read More >
Simone White
2017
Of Being Dispersed
Poems

Who can give           an account of occasions

 

Can     mechanized description so falter

 

Can move toward gesture to scissor the outline

 

Each to enable a series of seconds    breaking or burning

 

Can undo the work of a million years         of human love

 

if I curse you just right

Read More >
Celine Song
2026
Endlings

GO MIN
숙자야 (Sook Ja-yah)
I wasn’t born here, did you know that?
I’ve never told you that before
I was born on an island nearby
Really close, only a few hours away on a boat
A matchmaker bought my brother a drink
So he told her that he had the perfect bride for her client
An exceptional swimmer
A hearty bruise-woman
For a guarantee of lifetime of income
He gave me away
My big brother sold my life for a drink
And that’s my immigration
A little immigration of my own
Just to be beaten up by the sea waves all day
And then beaten up by my loser drunk husband all night

Silence

숙자야 (Sook Ja-yah)
What do you want to do in your next life?
In my next life
I want to drive a car
A little red one
Drive it everywhere
Go see the mountains
The big buildings
Drive it across the prairies
Take the highway
I don’t have a driver’s license
I can’t take the written test because I can’t read
But when I see someone drive a car on TV
It looks easy
I think I could do it
I think I’d be good at it
Maybe I could drive a cab
Drive people around
What do you think?
You think I’d be good at it?

Beat

숙자야 (Sook Ja-yah)
In your next life
I hope you get to live the way you want

Silence
 

Read More >
Terrance Hayes
1999
Muscular Music
Poems

I’m sure you won’t believe this,

but if a policeman walks behind me, I tremble:

What would Shaft do? What would Shaft do?

 

Bits of my courage flake away like dandruff.

I’m sweating even as I tell you this.

I’m not cool.

 

I keep the real me tucked beneath a wig,

I’m a small American frog.

I grow beautiful as the theatre dims.

Read More >
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.

Read More >
Seth Kantner
2005
Ordinary Wolves
A Novel

I remembered the sweet powerful taste of pop. Tommy Feathers had stopped for coffee when he was hunting wolverine. He tossed a bulged red and white can on the chopping block. “You’ll have tat one springtime,” he joked. He was sober; that meant he was laughing and friendly, not frothing about naluagmius starving his family, stealing food out of his children’s mouths. We had sat around waiting for it to thaw. We could have bought pops in Takunak but according to Abe, pop cost money, wasted aluminum, and was bad for our teeth. Nothing for something. Why not drink water? Now Iris was describing the high school friends and fun we’d always worried we missed out on, and I wondered why I hadn’t bought myself a few Cokes.

Read More >