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

Randall Kenan
1994
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
Stories

Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.

 

Damn.

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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.

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Charif Shanahan
2024
Trace Evidence: poems

It happened inside a single room.

For me. Forgive me

If you feel with this assertion I diminish you

Or the integrity of your story.

 

But it’s true: I was nowhere, there,

On the frayed brown carpet, between two beds—

Mine to the right, my brother’s to the left—

Counting the tiny holes

In the radiator cover, dark eyes

Piercing through painted-white metal.

 

When I looked around, I saw nothing that I was.

Not even other nothings, like me.

Do you think I take from you?

I do not take from you, I am you.

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Paul Guest
2007
Notes for My Body Double
Poems

…what of the glowing spine,

what of the toy stings of stock footage flames,

what of the jets you swatted dead

from the air with unmistakable joy,

you of the plastic-leather, pebbled Pleistocene flesh,

you of the palsied fury, you

of the put-upon by dissemblers and disturbers,

you, what of the life burned

so cheaply into celluloid we are charmed…

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Stephen Adly Guirgis
2006
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
A Play

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Cunningham, you’re the cynical, faithless spawn of a crackpot gypsy and a defrocked mick—yet, you just told me Jesus would have you on your knees in three minutes.

 

CUNNINGHAM: So?

 

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: So consider this: your friend Judas? He has Jesus for three years. Think about that, Cunningham. Three years in the foxhole with the best friend ya ever had, then he shot him in the back for a pack of Kools. Think what that says about the essential character of the man. Now go home and stir that into your wee gypsy teapot! Petition’s invalid, motion denied! Next case!

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Marcia Douglas
2023
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread
A Novel in Bass Riddim

A prophet is never recognized in his own country, especially when that country has fallen into the mouths of dragons. Bob waves to a woman in a BMW across the street. It’s his lawyer, Christine. “Is me, Bob!” She closes the tinted windows and weaves through traffic. There was a time when BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers. He thinks of the foolishness of that now.

            He returns to the park, searching for the boy from the night before. He wants to shine his shoes again, to see the light in his eyes from Africa reflected there. In the daylight, the park is different from how he remembered it, but the boy’s tree still leans, and there’s a man selling peanuts and asham.

            “You see the little youth that sleep inna the park?"

            "Which one?"

            “The one with the play-play guitar."

            “Oh, me remember him. Him in juvenile detention! Is a bad youth.”

            “No. Me see him last night.”

            “Him kill a Chinie man in August town. Man-slaughter."

            It doesn’t make sense. Bob has a feeling that he has stepped into the middle of someone’s dream. The fall-down skin itches and there is a dull pain behind his eyes. An idea comes to him.

            “You know Bob Marley?”

            “Yeah?”

            “What if me tell you him come back?”

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