Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Genevieve Sly Crane Fiction 2020
Evan Smith Drama 2002
Tracy K. Smith Poetry 2005
Dalia Sofer Fiction 2007
Jason Sommer Poetry 2001
Celine Song Drama 2026
Elizabeth Spires Poetry 1996
Jane Springer Poetry 2010
Matthew Stadler Fiction 1995
James Thomas Stevens Poetry 2000
Frank Stewart Poetry 1986
Ruth Stone Poetry 1986
Patricia Storace Nonfiction 1996
Patricia Storace Poetry 1996
Kelly Stuart Drama 2000
John Jeremiah Sullivan Nonfiction 2004
Melanie Sumner Fiction 1995
Shubha Sunder Fiction 2025
Mary Swander Nonfiction 1994
Mary Swander Poetry 1994
Stephania Taladrid Nonfiction 2023
Margaret Talbot Nonfiction 1999
Lysley Tenorio Fiction 2008
Sofi Thanhauser Nonfiction 2025
LB Thompson Poetry 2010
Clifford Thompson Nonfiction 2013
Nafissa Thompson-Spires Fiction 2019
Melanie Rae Thon Fiction 1997
Merritt Tierce Fiction 2019
Christopher Tilghman Fiction 1990
Jia Tolentino Nonfiction 2020
Peter Trachtenberg Nonfiction 2007
Vu Tran Fiction 2009
Judy Troy Fiction 1996
Tony Tulathimutte Fiction 2017

Selected winners

Jose Rivera
1992
Marisol and Other Plays

ANGEL: Here’s your big chance, baby. What would you like to ask the Angel of the Lord?

 

MARISOL (Energized): Are you real? Are you true? Are you gonna make the Bronx safe for me? Is it true angels’ favorite food is Thousand Island dressing? Is it true your shit smells like mangoes and when you’re drunk you speak Portuguese?

 

ANGEL: Honey, last time I was drunk…

 

          (Marisol gets a sudden, horrifying realization.)

 

MARISOL: Wait a minute – am I dead?

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LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
2016
TwERK
Poems

               titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.

thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride.

                            hyphy dancehall — no can

               hear tings demur.

titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofer

whine mih curvature: cause a road slaughtah.

                            ain’t neck breaking like dutty

               when she whine.

               titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.

thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride. sih?

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Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
2024
Snow in Midsummer
A Play

DOU YI

My hands were packed in dry ice

Flown across the Pacific and

Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.

My palms open doors to

Rooms my feet haven't walked through and

Caress a woman my eyes will never see.

It doesn't snow there but my

Nails ache when they touch ice and

Scratch strange characters onto that

Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.

His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but

He knows they're words from a

Language his tongue never learned

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice

Across the East Sea a yam farmer

Uses my corneas to see.

She dreams of snow but thinks

It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.

On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests

Food that never passed through my lips

Food my teeth didn't chew

Food my tongue hasn't tasted

Food that could have made this spirit stronger

And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.

But my heart--

My heart beats in this town,

Pumping blood through a man

Loved by the son of an official,

A son who moved Heaven and Earth for

His Happiness.

His Future.

His New Harmony.

These offerings have given me strength

I feel my spirit reviving!

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice.

Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi

Justice.

Justice.

Justice.

But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?

Justice. 

Justice.

That is my heart. It should beat inside me.

 

(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)

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Yannick Murphy
1990
Stories in Another Language

I thought, I bet the daughter’s glad she’s dead, because what her mother was doing, throwing herself into the grave on top of the box like that, looked funny. It looked funny because her mother was fat, and it looked so much like the mother was doing the Fat Man Dance, because her arms were spread out too, as if she were waiting for her daughter to spread out her arms also, and then they could hold hands and smack bellies together and dance in circles on the box just the way we always did in the summer when we did the Fat Man Dance. Because we always did the Fat Man Dance in the summer when we ran around with no clothes on and danced a lot because it was summer.

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Karen Hao
2026
Empire of AI

Over the years, I’ve found only one metaphor
that encapsulates the nature of what these AI
power players are: empires. During the long
era of European colonialism, empires seized
and extracted resources that were not their
own and exploited the labor of the people
they subjugated to mine, cultivate, and
refine those resources for the empire’s
enrichment. They projected racist,
dehumanizing ideas of their own superiority
and modernity to justify—and even entice the
conquered into accepting—the invasion of
sovereignty, the theft, and the subjugation.
They justified their quest for power by the
need to compete with other empires: In an
arms race, all bets are off. All this
ultimately served to entrench each empire’s
power and to drive its expansion and
progress. In the simplest terms, empires
amassed extraordinary riches across space and
time, through imposing a colonial world
order, at great expense to everyone else.
 

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Antoinette Nwandu
2018
Pass Over
A Play

                    MOSES

yo ass gon rise up to yo full potential too

gon git up off dis block

man

you remember

dat sunday school

ol reverend Missus be like

 

                    (as reverend missus)

sed uh

do you wanna cross dat river now chillun

sed uh

do you wanna cross dat river now chillum

 

                    KITCH

                    (gasping)

pass ovuh

 

                    MOSES

yeah nigga damn

i feel like we cud do dis shit

you feel me

git up off dis block

 

                    KITCH

amen!

 

                    MOSES

be all we cud be

 

                    KITCH

yes lawd!

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