Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Justin Cronin Fiction 2002
Stanley Crouch Nonfiction 1991
Michael Cunningham Fiction 1995
Charles D'Ambrosio Fiction 2006
Michael Dahlie Fiction 2010
J. D. Daniels Nonfiction 2016
Lydia Davis Fiction 1988
Nathan Alan Davis Drama 2018
Tyree Daye Poetry 2019
Connie Deanovich Poetry 1997
Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams Fiction 2013
Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams Nonfiction 2013
Hernan Diaz Fiction 2019
Jaquira Díaz Nonfiction 2020
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs Poetry 2016
Trudy Dittmar Nonfiction 2003
Matt Donovan Poetry 2010
Mark Doty Poetry 1994
Marcia Douglas Fiction 2023
Jennifer duBois Fiction 2013
Bruce Duffy Fiction 1988
Steven Dunn Fiction 2021
Anaïs Duplan Nonfiction 2022
Pam Durban Fiction 1987
Stuart Dybek Fiction 1985
Gerald Early Nonfiction 1988
Russell Edson Poetry 1989
Louis Edwards Fiction 1994
Kim Edwards Fiction 2002
Erik Ehn Drama 1997
Gretel Ehrlich Nonfiction 1987
Nancy Eimers Poetry 1998
Deborah Eisenberg Fiction 1987
Thomas Sayers Ellis Poetry 2005
Jeffrey Eugenides Fiction 1993

Selected winners

Frank Stewart
1986
Flying the Red Eye
Poems

Circling slow and dripping like a fat June bug in the rain,

turbos throbbing in the labored

dark over Chicago, the Electra turned, one wing

pivoted up, like an old dog tilted on three legs,

smelling dank, an old heaviness in him, as though

he were about to tumble over toward those glorious,

snowy lights below. There might have been

freezing sleet as well. In any case, I know

I laughed into a glass half filled with bourbon,

glanced again at the two feathered props

out the window, their cowlings charred and smoky.

But freed all at once from months of killing depression,

elated strangely, almost uplifted.

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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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Kirsten Bakis
2004
Lives of the Monster Dogs
A Novel

The photo showed a dog, standing on its hind legs, being helped from the door of a helicopter by a serious-looking man in a down vest. The dog seemed to stand about the same height as the man, and looked like a Malamute. The strange thing about it, besides its larger-than-average size, was the fact that it was wearing a dark-colored jacket which looked like part of an old-fashioned military uniform, and a pair of spectacles, and that it appeared to have hands instead of front paws. In one of those gloved hands it held a cane, which was pointed at an awkward angle, probably because of the way the man was holding on to that foreleg just above the elbow. The other hand gripped the side of the helicopter doorway. The expression on the animal’s face was one of terror. Its lips were slightly parted, its ears were pointing straight backward, and its eyes were wide.

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Daniel Alarcon
2004
War by Candlelight
Stories

In Lima, dying is the local sport. Those who die in phantasmagoric fashion, violently, spectacularly, are celebrated in the fifty-cent papers beneath appropriately gory headlines: DRIVER GETS MELON BURST or NARCO SHOOTOUT, BYSTANDERS EAT LEAD. I don’t work at that kind of newspaper, but if I did, I would write those headlines too. Like my father, I never refuse work. I’ve covered drug busts, double homicides, fires at discos and markets, traffic accidents, bombs in shopping centers. I’ve profiled corrupt politicians, drunken has-been soccer players, artists who hate the world. But I’ve never covered the unexpected death of a middle-aged worker in a public hospital. Mourned by his wife. His child. His other wife. Her children.

 

My father’s dying was not news.

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Victor LaValle
2004
The Ecstatic
A Novel

My sister was enrolled in a beauty pageant for virgins, a contest I thought she could win. She was cute enough, but also, how many teenage hymens were left in America anymore? Even the emu-faced girls had been initiated by twelve. Fewer contestants fueled better odds.

 

- You might actually win, I told Nabisase.

 

- I’m glad that this surprises you, she said.

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