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

Ralph Lombreglia

1998

Make Me Work

Stories

The statue’s resting place looked pretty good. All she really had to do was get him deep enough so the dogs didn’t dig him up before the sale. After her exertions over his tomb, the hollow Saint Joseph seemed to weigh nothing in her hand. He seemed to float in space before her eyes. She set him down on his back in the hole, but found that she couldn’t shovel the dirt on top of him, not right on his face like that. She turned him face-down, but that seemed worse. When she picked him up again, half-frozen dirt had sifted into his open base. You could see it through the translucent, cream-colored skin: Saint Joseph turning brown as he filled up with soil.

Michael R. Jackson

2019

A Strange Loop

THOUGHT #3

Tyler Perry knows how to bring everything together wit all the stories? And all the singing? And all the different people talking?

THOUGHT #1

And Tyler Perry don’t never forget to bring in the spirit’ch’alities.

THOUGHT #2

‘Cause Tyler Perry loves his Mama—

THOUGHT #6

And the Lord—

THOUGHT #1

So write a nice, clean Tyler Perry-like gospel play for your parents please?

Mindy Aloff

1987

Hippo in a Tutu

Dancing in Disney Animation

Even in a traditional "princess" picture, such as the still-popular 1950 Cinderella, the scene with the most romantic magic—the Fred-and-Ginger buoyancy and sense of brimming anticipation—is not, as we would expect, Cinderella's waltz with the Prince in the ballroom. That we only get to glimpse from behind the courtiers watching it—during those moments when the dance isn't interrupted by comic business for secondary characters or by the couple themselves breaking off the dance merely to drink in each other's shadows. The accent is on their private discovery of their feelings, not on the public celebration of their newfound romance. The real dance energy, rather, surges forth in the designing, cutting, and assembly of the heroine's dress in her lonely bedroom by an exaltation of singing mice and birds: a solitary girl's fantasy. The Disney inspirational artist for Cinderella, as for many animated features of the 1950s, was the brilliant and thoughtful painter Mary Blair. Although Blair was frequently heartbroken by what she viewed as the mistranslation of her concepts in the finished films—a feeling that seems to be embodied in the moment when Cinderella's wicked stepmother and stepsisters tear her dress to shreds—throughout the picture you can still see evidence of Blair's deeply unconventional ideas of how stories can be told through synecdoche (key details made to stand for a larger whole) and emotions represented through color and shifts in proportion.

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.

Franz Wright

1991

Entry in an Unknown Hand

Poems

The street deserted. Nobody,

only you and one last

dirt colored robin,

fastened to its branch

against the wind. It seems

you have arrived

late, the city unfamiliar,

the address lost.

And you made such a serious effort –

pondered the obstacles deeply,

tried to be your own critic.

Yet no one came to listen.

Maybe they came, and then left.

After you traveled so far,

just to be there.

It was a failure, that is what they will say.

Benjamin Percy

2008

The Wilding

A Novel

“You see my grandson over there.” Justin’s father humps his chin in Graham’s direction without taking his eyes off Seth. “You don’t want him to see what the inside of your skull looks like, do you?”

“You’d never do that,” Seth says. “I could walk right up to that rifle and stick my finger in it and you’d never do a thing.”

“Come on and try.”

“You’re so full of it.”

Then his father swings the barrel left and fires. The crack of the gunshot is followed by the chime of glass shattering, falling from the red pickup, its left headlight destroyed.

For a moment Seth stares at his truck. “You’ll fucking pay for that,” he says.

Selected winners