Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
D.J. Waldie Nonfiction 1998
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
Tracey Scott Wilson Drama 2004
August Wilson Drama 1986
Milo Wippermann Poetry 2023
Tobias Wolff Fiction 1989
Tobias Wolff Nonfiction 1989
John Wray Fiction 2001
Austin Wright Fiction 1985
Franz Wright Poetry 1991
Austin Wright Nonfiction 1985
C.D. Wright Poetry 1989
Stephen Wright Fiction 1990
Lauren Yee Drama 2019
Javier Zamora Nonfiction 2024
Ada Zhang Fiction 2024

Selected winners

Albert Mobilio
2000
The Geographics
Poems

no one wants to admit it but you just

might end up one day in the wrong

place at the wrong time and some

evil shit rains down on you

and maybe you get

crippled or blind

or plain old

dead and

not one soul will give a good goddamn

because they can soothe them-

selves with a wrung out prayer

about wrong places and

wrong times, when

even as they’re

thinking that

they know

that everywhere is the wrong place

and every hour is the wrong hour

and that bad breaks don’t seek

you out; they’re always there

waiting to swing into action

like a traitor limb you

didn’t even know

you had

Read More >
Nadia Owusu
2019
Aftershocks

            Once, when I was a very little girl in a bubble bath, I asked my father why I had a belly button. He was sitting on the toilet lid reading while I splashed. He peered at me over the top of his book.

             “So you know where your center is,” he said.

           “Why do I need to know where my center is?” I asked.

            “So you don’t lose your balance,” he said. “Your center is where all the different parts of who you are come together. It used to connect you to your mother and to the beginning of human history in Africa.” I cannot be certain this is true, but when I remember him saying this, I hear his voice catch on the word mother.

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Lysley Tenorio
2008
Monstress
Stories

“Three words,” Gaz said. “Motion. Picture. History.” He got up, circled the table as he explained his movie: en route to Earth from a distant solar system, the crew of the Valedictorian crash-lands on a hostile planet inhabited by bat-winged pygmies, lobster-clawed cannibals, two-headed vampires. “That’s where your stuff comes in. I’m going to splice up your movies with mine.” He went on about the mixing-up of genres, chop-suey cinema, bringing together East and West. “We’d be the ambassadors of international film!”

 

“What’s your thinking on this?” Checkers asked me in Tagalog. “Is this man serious? Is he just an American fool?”

 

“Ask how much he’ll pay,” I said, “get twenty percent more, give him the movies, and show him to the door.”

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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.

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Hansol Jung
2018
Wild Goose Dreams
A Play

​​

CHORUS

-   Search: Husband affair asset division.

-   Askkorealaw dot com Q and A

- Q. My dirty husband is sexing with our daughter’s tutor. Will I get rich if I divorce him or should I make him suffer?

-   A. Make him suffer.

 

MINSUNG

Although, my wife and daughter live in America, I don’t think they’d know if I lit myself on fire,

how will they know that I’m having an affair?

That was a joke.

They call us the goose fathers, I could look that up for you.

 

CHORUS

-   Search: Goose father origin

-   Wikipedia Korea

 

MINSUNG

Aha.

 

CHORUS

-   The goose father is a Korean man who works in Korea while his wife and children stay in an English-speaking country for the sake of the children’s education. / The term is

 

MINSUNG

The term is inspired by the fact that geese migrate, just as the goose dad must travel a great distance to see his family.

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Wright Morris
1985
Plains Song
For Female Voices

Orion shot rabbits, but to tell the truth, it almost sickened Cora to clean and cook them. Stripped of its pelt, the taut body glistened. The small legs put her in mind of fingers. On her plate all she could think of was the pleading eyes. Somehow this did not trouble her about chickens, which she took the pains to behead herself, sometimes chasing the headless flapping bird around the chopping block. Orion plucked the bird for her, and the feathers were saved for a sleeping crib for Madge.

Read More >