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

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

2019

Beast Meridian

That I commune with the dead as I oil your feet. My house at the throat of the river, the door to this world, I wait for you. That I ask of the spirit and receive the knowledges: yerbabuena, vela de virgen, baño de alhucema. Cut the joint at the hoof & fatten the soup. Accept this offering, thank the plant. That I love you with the knowledge of our ways lost to violence. That you will call me up from the silt in your bones.

Linda Gregg

1985

Too Bright to See / Alma

Poems

She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.

She makes no sound. She is always alone.

If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in

she leaves. She calls you Dear.

I was thinking of giving her my flowers.

Just now she came over and said,

‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’

I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’

She said, ‘No Dear.’

I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’

She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’

I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’

Alexander Chee

2003

Edinburgh

A Novel

When I was a boy and I sang, my voice felt to me like a leak sprung from a small and secret star hidden somewhere in my chest and whatever there was about me that was fragile disappeared when my mouth opened and I let the voice out. We learned, we were prisons for our voices. You could want to try and make sure the door was always open. Be like a bell, Big Eric would say. But he didn’t know. We weren’t something struck to make a tone. We were strike and instrument both. If you can hold the air and shake it to make something, you learn, maybe you can make anything. Maybe you can walk out of here on this thin, thin air.

Carvell Wallace

2026

Another Word for Love

Once, I read a story—or maybe I imagined a
story—of two children ages eight and twelve
discovering the dead body of the grandmother
who was taking care of them. The older child,
a girl, took responsibility then. Feeding her
younger brother, covering the body, keeping
life going, until the smell got too much, and
they asked a neighbor for help. They were, of
course, rescued. But I often wonder what they
were rescued from. It is good, of course, if
they were brought into a place of safety,
steady reliable meals, home, and hopefully
love and care. But somewhere in me the feeling
of hurtling alone is itself the feeling of
home, a human truth the size of the universe,
the size of my mother and me in a motel with
no future to be certain of. I would never want
that for myself or for my children. I would
never want that for anyone. And yet sometimes,
I want it for myself.

Excerpts from ANOTHER WORD FOR LOVE: A MEMOIR by Carvell Wallace. Copyright © 2024 by Carvell Wallace. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved.