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

Gordon Grice

1999

The Red Hourglass

Lives of the Predators

I decided the caterpillar was too stupid to live. I put it into the carabid beetle’s container. The caterpillar was much larger, but it had no means of defense. The carabid sliced into it and lapped at its leaking blood. Because the caterpillar was so big, the carabid had to repeat his attack eight or ten times. The caterpillar crawled away frantically for the first few wounds, but it was so slow that its movements hardly inconvenienced the beetle drinking from its bleeding flank. After ten minutes or so the caterpillar lay still. Its jade flesh turned black as the beetle chewed and drained it.

Sylvia Khoury

2021

Against the Hillside

ANTHONY
I’m sorry, sir.
I don’t think I understand.

MATT
She took her kid and left in the middle of the night.
To go where?
She’s in the middle of the desert.

ANTHONY
Sir, if I may.

MATT
You may.

ANTHONY
Her leaving
What does any of that have to do with us?

MATT
What does that have to do with us?
We did that, Anthony.
We broke that family up.

A moment.

MATT
Do you not understand that?

ANTHONY
It doesn’t matter what I understand, sir.

Leopoldine Core

2015

When Watched

Stories

She remembers sensing—almost smelling—that he wanted to kill her. Or that for a split second the thought was spreading itself in his mind. She remembers the terrible little theater of his eyes, which she had always thought to be blue. But looking at them in the afternoon glare, she saw that they weren’t even a little bit blue. They were grey.

Sofi Thanhauser

2025

Worn: A People’s History of Clothing

Today, it is no longer cheaper to make your own clothes than to buy them. A task that once fell within the province of the ordinary household is now an esoteric hobby, requiring skills out of reach to most ordinary Americans. It can even be cost prohibitive, since to buy the cloth to make a shirt will often cost more than the price of a new shirt. A curious reversal.

Ralph Tharpe, the former design engineer at Cone Mills in North Carolina, and the man responsible for making denim for Levi’s 501s during the 1970s, put the question to me this way: “Why is it that from 1960 to today the price of a Ford truck has increased ten times over and the price of a pair of dungarees has stayed the same?” This question becomes even more puzzling when one considers that many mass-manufacturing processes have been automated since the 1960s but sewing is not one of them. The process one follows to sew a garment has not changed materially since the advent of the sewing machine. Fabric is a fussy and unpredictable material, unlike sheet metal, that still requires the subtle manipulation of tension that can only be done by a real human hand.

How then, did this happen?

Joshua Bennett

2021

The Sobbing School

Poems

Please, excuse my shadow. I can’t

stop leaving. I don’t know how

to name what I don’t know

well enough to render

in a single sitting. Every poem

about us seems an impossible labor,

like forgetting the face

of the sea, or trying to find

a more perfect name for water.

Shayok Misha Chowdhury

2024

Public Obscenities

A Play

CHOTON

I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…

He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.

…if that’s a penis then…

He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.

I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.

RAHEEM

Okay.

CHOTON

It’s a little nunu.

RAHEEM

Well I like your little nunu…

RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.

CHOTON

Ow. Careful.

RAHEEM

What?

CHOTON

No it’s— it’s just sensitive.

Selected winners