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
Jaquira Díaz Nonfiction 2020
Hernan Diaz Fiction 2019
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

Ina Cariño
2022
FEAST
Poems

so mama said no running, afraid
for me: shriveled lansones, sickly.

threat of skinned shins. cherry
glow of lola’s clove cigarettes,

smoke plumes sealing my throat.
or on my cheeks, plum rashes

blooming from playing in witchwillow.
these days, I don’t run much.

but I was only seven when I broke
a girl’s front teeth. 

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Mary Swander
1994
Heaven-And-Earth House
Poems

We are the nothing-to-lose ones,

the try-anything-once ones,

weed seeds inside our cells –

dandelion, nettle, lizard tail –

roots sunk in, for it is the tips

that count, reaching out to tap

new moisture. Roots, stems, leaves,

the stomata, those little mouths

opening, closing, sucking in air

in the evening when we boil

wild ginger and sleep in its vapor.

Like cures like, we hear in the morning

when we brush ourselves with

vegetable fiber in the shower,

beat ourselves with our fists.

(This is no crazier than anything else.)

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Tyehimba Jess
2006
leadbelly
Poems

Dear Yu Honor

Yu may rmember me when yu visits prison

here I am Walter Boyd Leadbelly #42738

yo best big niger from Sugarland Farm

wit my stella guitar and songs yu like

I play it all like a black machine for yu loud an slow

Down in the valley    What a frend we have in

Jesus an I Sugarland shuffle like pickin cotton far as

eye cn see I need my freedom like yu said yu was gone give me

yur honor all I need a second chance rmembr me

yu sed I was som niger   som niger need they pardon

GOVERNOR

thank yu for yo kind kind hand yo wisdum.

 

Copyright 2004 by Tyehimba Jess. Published by Verse Press. Reprinted with permission of the author and Wave Books. 

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Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
2012
Harlem Is Nowhere
A Journey to the Mecca of Black America

In this dream Harlem, the avenues are even wider and more grand. I visit elegant lounges that have mahogany fittings and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the avenue—striped silk curtains billow in the breeze. In that dream Harlem, that nowhere Harlem, I reach the campus of City College by ascending the face of a ragged cliff many times more treacherous than the steps of St. Nicholas Park. In these settings unfold various plots of which I am not quite the author.

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Merritt Tierce
2019
Love Me Back
A Novel

I’m good enough to get the once-over in the bar at The Restaurant, I see them thinking my

smallness is appealing, my ass and face are cute enough, I see them thinking that short haircut

might be sexy. I’m always in a backless cocktail dress and heels, I’m flat chested and a tad

muscular so they ask me if I’m a dancer and say Call me sometime, let’s have a drink. It took

me a while to understand you’re supposed to work that for your money but you can let the

willingness fall right off your face when you turn around. It took me a while to understand that of

course men fling their entreaties out in swarms, like schools of sperm, hoping one will stick.

 
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