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
Franz Wright Poetry 1991
Austin Wright Nonfiction 1985
C.D. Wright Poetry 1989
Stephen Wright Fiction 1990
Austin Wright Fiction 1985
Lauren Yee Drama 2019
Javier Zamora Nonfiction 2024
Ada Zhang Fiction 2024

Selected winners

Roger Reeves
2015
King Me
Poems

The deaf hear only in their dreams. I am sure

I can hear nothing. My how the mountain leaps

towards the sea and the little village below.

Who sang for the white plate my father tossed

at my sister’s shadow? What funeral is held

for a broken compass? When cutting onions,

leave a candle lit somewhere near an old man

holding his wife in a napkin. In the torn light of evening,

there is enough treason for everybody. Excuse me,

I should say something about the beauty of cranes.

Once in a sycamore I tossed a brick at a boy’s head.

It opened like the sea. I think I saw a crane.

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Shane McCrae
2011
Mule
Poems

And we divorced in the survives            and O

It was a comedy            and first you ever slept with me

And marry me and marry me and O

 

How fat I used to be

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Suzan-Lori Parks
1992
America Play and Other Works

BLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Yesterday today next summer tomorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world. Uh! Oh. Dont be uhlarmed. Do not be afeared. It was painless. Uh painless passin. He falls twenty-three floors to his death. 23 floors from uh passin ship from space tuh splat on thuh pavement. He have uh head he been keeping under thuh Tee V. On his bottom pantry shelf. He have uh head that hurts. Dont fit right. Put it on tuh go tuh thuh store in it pinched him when he walks his thoughts dont got room. Why dieded he huh? Where he gonna go now that he done dieded? Where he gonna go tuh wash his hands?

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Samuel Kọ́láwọlé
2025
The Road to the Salt Sea: A Novel

Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.

Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.

He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?

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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.

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Allison Glock
2004
Beauty Before Comfort
The Story of an American Original

Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.

 

“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.

 

“Hush up, Jeannie.”

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