Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Harriet Ritvo Nonfiction 1990
José Rivera Drama 1992
Lewis Robinson Fiction 2003
James Robison Fiction 1985
Rick Rofihe Fiction 1991
Carlo Rotella Nonfiction 2007
Jess Row Fiction 2003
Mary Ruefle Poetry 1995
Sarah Ruhl Drama 2003
Michael Ryan Poetry 1987
Russ Rymer Nonfiction 1995
Lucy Sante Nonfiction 1989
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh Nonfiction 2010
James Schuyler Poetry 1985
Claire Schwartz Poetry 2022
Salvatore Scibona Fiction 2009
Danzy Senna Fiction 2002
Anton Shammas Fiction 1991
Anton Shammas Nonfiction 1991
Charif Shanahan Poetry 2024
Akhil Sharma Fiction 2001
Lisa Shea Fiction 1993
Julie Sheehan Poetry 2008
Mona Simpson Fiction 1986
Safiya Sinclair Poetry 2016
Jake Skeets Poetry 2020
Aisha Sabatini Sloan Nonfiction 2025
Genevieve Sly Crane Fiction 2020
Evan Smith Drama 2002
Tracy K. Smith Poetry 2005
Dalia Sofer Fiction 2007
Jason Sommer Poetry 2001
Elizabeth Spires Poetry 1996
Jane Springer Poetry 2010
Matthew Stadler Fiction 1995

Selected winners

Marwa Helal
2021
Invasive species

By 1924, there were about 200,000 Arabs living in the United States¹ and by 2000, at least 3.5 million Americans were of Arab descent².

 

It is 2010. A census form arrives in the mail.

 

I check OTHER and write-in: A-R-A-B.

 

In 2016, Obama wants to add a new racial category and has chosen an acronym to describe a group of people: MENA (Middle Eastern and North African)³

 

I note the absence of the word “Arab.”

 

Still, they do not sense us⁴.

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Jenny Johnson
2015
The Best American Poetry 2012

A far cry. Epistrophy. A refusal.

A nightingale is recorded in a field

where finally we meet to touch and sleep.

A nightingale attests

as bombers buzz and whir

overhead enroute to raid.

We meet undercover of brush and dust.

We meet to revise what we heard.

The year I can’t tell you. The past restages

the future. Palindrome we can’t resolve.

But the coded trill a fever ascending,

a Markov chain, discrete equation,

generative pulse, sweet arrest,

bronchial junction, harmonic jam.

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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.

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Mark Doty
1994
My Alexandria
Poems

Prendergast painted the Public Garden;

remembered, even at a little distance,

the city takes on his ravishing tones.

 

Jots of color resolve: massed parasols

above a glimmering pond, the transit

of almost translucent swans. Brilliant bits

 

- jewels? slices of sugared fruit? – bloom

into a clutch of skirts on the bridge

above the summer boaters. His city’s essence:

 

all the hues of chintzes or makeup

or Italian ices, all the sheen artifice

is capable of. Our city’s lavish paintbox.

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Daniel Orozco
2011
Orientation
And Other Stories

There are no personal phone calls allowed. We do, however, allow for emergencies. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first. If you can’t find your supervisor, ask Phillip Spiers, who sits over there. He’ll check with Clarissa Nicks, who sits over there. If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go.

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