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
Nathan Alan Davis	Drama	2018
Lydia Davis	Fiction	1988
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
Kim Edwards	Fiction	2002
Louis Edwards	Fiction	1994
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

Louis Edwards

1994

Ten Seconds

A Novel

“Malcolm is dead,” Eddie kept hearing as he raced to the shop. As he got closer, he saw the flashing lights, and the siren that had been only an eerie, barely audible musical accompaniment to his thoughts began to register as belonging to an ambulance and not as being a regular plant alarm. He knew that he would not cry no matter how awful it was; he never cried. That was one thing he never had to worry about. If one of them had to be killed here, it was better that it was Malcolm—because if Eddie had been killed, Malcolm would have cried like a baby.

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.

Tracy K. Smith

2005

Life on Mars

Poems

Some of the prisoners were strung like beef

From the ceilings of their cells. “Gus”

Was led around on a leash. I mean dragged.

Others were ridden like mules. The guards

Were under a tremendous amount of pleasure.

I mean pressure. Pretty disgusting. Not

What you’d expect from Americans.

Just kidding. I’m only talking about people

Having a good time, blowing off steam.

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.

Lewis Robinson

2003

Officer Friendly and Other Stories

“Now, because it’s his birthday and he wasn’t supposed to make it this far, he asked that we throw him a bash, like the old Augusta blowouts, and he asked that at midnight we shoot him dead.”

I stared at him. He didn’t waver.

“We figure you’re the best guy to do it,” he said, slapping a hand on my shoulder.

“I’ve never even shot a gun,” I said.

He pulled up my shirt and took the gun from the back of my pants. “It’s pretty basic. Point and pull. You’ve seen the movies.” He aimed the pistol at the portrait of the old man, said “Bang” and faked the recoil, then blew imaginary smoke from the barrel.

Andre Aciman

1995

Out of Egypt

A Memoir

People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.

Selected winners