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

Ladan Osman

2021

Exiles of Eden

A friend asks, “What are you waiting for?

The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”

Maybe I am the straw.

Maybe I am hay. I made a list of rhyming words:

Bray, flay, array.

They all seemed to relate to farms, decaying things,

gray days, dismay.

I am recently reckless about making a display

of my unhappiness. Perhaps you may survey it.

Perhaps I may stray from it, go to the wrong home

by accident and say, “Oh! Here already?”

You know I’m fraying and just watch it.

You don’t even try to braid me together.

Joan Chase

1987

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia

A Novel

For as long as we could remember we had been together in the house which established the center of the known world. When we were younger we woke in the mornings while it was still dark. Grandad would be clumping out of his back room and down the hall to the bathroom, phantom-like in his long underwear. He wore it because he was a farmer, which was why he got up before first light to do the chores. In the two iron beds in the attic room there were the four of us—Celia and Jenny, who were sisters, Anne and Katie, sisters too, like our mothers, who were sisters. Sometimes we watched each other, knew differences. But most of the time it was as though the four of us were one and we lived in days that gathered into one stream of time, undifferentiated and communal.

Safiya Sinclair

2016

Cannibal

Poems

In this wet season my gone mother

climbs back again

and everything here smells gutted—

bloodtide, sea grapes in thick bloom,

our smashed plates and teacups. Dismantling

this grey shoreline for some kind of home, scared

orphans out bleating with the mongrels,

all of us starved

for something reclaimable. What chases them,

her barefoot rain, stains my unopened petunia,

shined church shoes, our black words, our hands.

I’ll catch the day creep in, her dirt marking my father’s

neck, oil-dreck steeped dark to every collar,

her tar this same fish odor I am washing.

I know I am one of them. The emptied.

Hilary Leichter

2026

Terrace Story

The old window gave a grand view of Yellow Tree, trunk to branch. They called it Yellow Tree even though the gingko was yellow for only about a week each year, its fan-shaped leaves rustling to the ground at the first suggestion of a breeze. Annie and Edward held the baby to the window and said, “See? Yellow!” But she was too small to say “yellow” in response. She just looked and watched and touched the glass. They wiped her fingerprints from the window and kissed the fingers that made the prints. Then the leaves fell, and the scenery changed. Some views show less than half of what needs seeing.

When the rent became unpayable, they went in search of a more affordable living situation. What’s your living situation? Annie turned the phrase over in her mind, the situation of their life. They had not saved nearly enough for a broker’s fee, let alone a security deposit.

“It looks smaller than it really is,” Edward said, leading Annie around the new apartment. A dimly lit lopsided square. “Give it some time, it might grow on you!”

“You mean it might literally grow?” Annie asked.

At the new apartment, there were no views of Yellow Tree. The introverted windows were gated and clasped and huddled around a central shaft that Edward dubbed Pigeon Tunnel. Edward and Annie liked inventing proper nouns for their world. Yellow Tree, Pigeon Tunnel, Closet Mystery. Closet Mystery was Annie’s term for the mystery of their single, overstuffed closet. Upon opening, what would catapult forth? It was a bona fide enigma. Edward and Annie picked a proper noun for their baby too. Her noun was Rose.

Linda Gregg

1985

Too Bright to See / Alma

Poems

She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.

She makes no sound. She is always alone.

If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in

she leaves. She calls you Dear.

I was thinking of giving her my flowers.

Just now she came over and said,

‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’

I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’

She said, ‘No Dear.’

I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’

She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’

I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’

Lara Mimosa Montes

2026

The Time of the Novel

When I put in my notice at the bookstore, the manager—a heavy-set woman in her mid-forties who often spoke in monosyllabic bursts—curtly replied, “We’re sorry to see you go.” Whether my employer regretted her inability to create a work environment that might have fostered my personal growth and tempted me to reconsider my options was beyond the scope of my then-nascent narrative powers, but I did not elaborate, as I did not wish to draw out the details surrounding my sudden departure. Outwardly, I feigned regret, but inside, I rejoiced: I was free, I thought, free to take leave of my post and bid my old, monotonous life among books and bookish people goodbye! A more urgent position awaited me in the form of a transparent eye. I shook the manager’s hand, and before the day was done, I updated my email account preferences so that in one week’s time, any work-related queries would receive the following automated response:

HELLO: I AM CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. I’M CHASING A DREAM CALLED PROSE.

Selected winners