Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Roger Fanning Poetry 1992
Anderson Ferrell Fiction 1996
Emil Ferris Fiction 2025
Kathleen Finneran Nonfiction 2001
Sidik Fofana Fiction 2023
Tope Folarin Fiction 2021
Ben Fountain Fiction 2007
Carribean Fragoza Fiction 2023
Jonathan Franzen Fiction 1988
Kennedy Fraser Nonfiction 1994
Ian Frazier Nonfiction 1989
Nell Freudenberger Fiction 2005
Forrest Gander Poetry 1997
Cristina García Fiction 1996
Madeleine George Drama 2016
David Gewanter Poetry 2002
Melissa James Gibson Drama 2002
Dagoberto Gilb Fiction 1993
Samantha Gillison Fiction 2000
Aracelis Girmay Poetry 2015
Jody Gladding Poetry 1997
Allison Glock Nonfiction 2004
Molly Gloss Fiction 1996
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Fiction 1991
Elisa Gonzalez Poetry 2024
Allegra Goodman Fiction 1991
Jorie Graham Poetry 1985
Donnetta Lavinia Grays Drama 2021
Lucy Grealy Nonfiction 1995
Lucy Grealy Poetry 1995
Elana Greenfield Drama 2004
Elana Greenfield Fiction 2004
Kaitlyn Greenidge Fiction 2017
Linda Gregg Poetry 1985
Gordon Grice Nonfiction 1999

Selected winners

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
2024
Snow in Midsummer
A Play

DOU YI

My hands were packed in dry ice

Flown across the Pacific and

Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.

My palms open doors to

Rooms my feet haven't walked through and

Caress a woman my eyes will never see.

It doesn't snow there but my

Nails ache when they touch ice and

Scratch strange characters onto that

Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.

His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but

He knows they're words from a

Language his tongue never learned

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice

Across the East Sea a yam farmer

Uses my corneas to see.

She dreams of snow but thinks

It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.

On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests

Food that never passed through my lips

Food my teeth didn't chew

Food my tongue hasn't tasted

Food that could have made this spirit stronger

And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.

But my heart--

My heart beats in this town,

Pumping blood through a man

Loved by the son of an official,

A son who moved Heaven and Earth for

His Happiness.

His Future.

His New Harmony.

These offerings have given me strength

I feel my spirit reviving!

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice.

Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi

Justice.

Justice.

Justice.

But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?

Justice. 

Justice.

That is my heart. It should beat inside me.

 

(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)

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Lysley Tenorio
2008
Monstress
Stories

“Three words,” Gaz said. “Motion. Picture. History.” He got up, circled the table as he explained his movie: en route to Earth from a distant solar system, the crew of the Valedictorian crash-lands on a hostile planet inhabited by bat-winged pygmies, lobster-clawed cannibals, two-headed vampires. “That’s where your stuff comes in. I’m going to splice up your movies with mine.” He went on about the mixing-up of genres, chop-suey cinema, bringing together East and West. “We’d be the ambassadors of international film!”

 

“What’s your thinking on this?” Checkers asked me in Tagalog. “Is this man serious? Is he just an American fool?”

 

“Ask how much he’ll pay,” I said, “get twenty percent more, give him the movies, and show him to the door.”

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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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Josip Novakovich
1997
Apricots from Chernobyl
Essays

The police ask me to empty my pockets. I turn them inside out and lay my miserabilia on the table. Two policemen quite unashamedly feel my thighs and ass, which tickles me. With clinical concentration they examine the stuff on the table. It is an obscene invasion of my privacy, more so than if they had turned my asshole inside out and inspected it under a microscope—any microbiologist could tell you that there we are remarkably similar. In pockets turned inside out you can see how we differ.

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Albert Mobilio
2000
Breathing Room

Breathing Room 

There are lives twice as long as others; 

they might look back on those 

behind them like runners nearing 

the finish line relieved 

not to have been out of it so early. 

We wake one day to an understanding 

about our diminishment yet 

by evening, we’ve turned that corner— 

the present is everything; its tedium 

flaring in the window’s reflection. 

 

You get tired of being this way. 

Plans go awry & other plans 

get made elsewhere, somewhere 

elaborately empty. Still, we believe

ourselves slightly beautiful as we check 

the door then fill the bedside glass, 

means of accumulation mastered, 

our complaint well turned. 

Unheard behind that window, the night sky— 

boundless—still roars.

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Stephanie Powell Watts
2013
We Are Taking Only What We Need
Stories

Daddy shook the box, kicked it, mumbled under his breath something that sounded like it had teeth. He came from around the house with a shovel and dragged it behind him, along with the box, to the woods. He would bury my dog, I thought.

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