Search all Winners

Name Sort descending	Genre	Year
Jack Turner	Nonfiction	2007
Genya Turovskaya	Poetry	2020
Mark Turpin	Poetry	1997
Samrat Upadhyay	Fiction	2001
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi	Fiction	2015
A.J. Verdelle	Fiction	1996
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal	Poetry	2019
William T. Vollmann	Fiction	1988
Ocean Vuong	Poetry	2016
D.J. Waldie	Nonfiction	1998
Carvell Wallace	Nonfiction	2026
David Foster Wallace	Fiction	1987
Anthony Walton	Nonfiction	1998
Weike Wang	Fiction	2018
Esmé Weijun Wang	Nonfiction	2018
Anne Washburn	Drama	2015
Teddy Wayne	Fiction	2011
Charles Harper Webb	Poetry	1998
Kerri Webster	Poetry	2011
Joshua Weiner	Poetry	2002
Annie Wenstrup	Poetry	2025
Timberlake Wertenbaker	Drama	1989
Kate Wheeler	Fiction	1994
Simone White	Poetry	2017
Colson Whitehead	Fiction	2000
Marianne Wiggins	Fiction	1989
Amy Wilentz	Nonfiction	1990
Damien Wilkins	Fiction	1992
Claude Wilkinson	Poetry	2000
Phillip B. Williams	Poetry	2017
Greg Williamson	Poetry	1998
August Wilson	Drama	1986
Tracey Scott Wilson	Drama	2004
Milo Wippermann	Poetry	2023
Tobias Wolff	Fiction	1989

Selected winners

Anthony Carelli

2015

Carnations

Poems

Kenosha is hideous behind us, cloaked by this cloud that hangs

On the pigeons flushed out: the last exhalation of the auto assembly.

We wait at the base of the docks, and talk about the White Sox,

Not the Roman Empire. My father and I stare right at it, but talk baseball.

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.

Martha Zweig

1999

Vinegar Bone

Poems

He did it deliberately &

so when the police tracked him down he was

able to explain it so

clearly they had to

agree. Still, they hadn’t done it.

Anyway, he’d checked it out &

it was what they’d suspected,

women! – women just

opened & spilled, there was

nothing special in there after all.

Morgan Meis

2013

Ruins

Selected Essays

… I used to love it when it would rain in Los Angeles. I felt that the city was made suddenly reflective by the rain, that it was being coated in another, deeper layer of what it was by the falling moisture. It made me sad and that pleased me. It was a moment of relief from what I took to be the exhausting project of pretending to be happy all of the time.

Jordan E. Cooper

2021

Ain't No Mo'

PEACHES
If you are one of those people who come to shows just so you can cough your way through them, please take this time to unwrap your cough drops and remind your body to shut itself the fuck up. However, this is still a show that you are allowed to be a part of. If you feel like laughing, laugh. If you wanna shout, bitch, shout, we will gladly hold your mule. Talk to us if you want. This is your church. And for those of you who are quiet, obedient and unresponsive in your church, consider this yo black church, yo sanctuary, yo juke joint, yo kitchen table, yo trial shaker, yo money maker, yo elevator, yo resuscitator.