Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
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
Virginia Grise Drama 2013
Rinne Groff Drama 2005

Selected winners

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
2019
Beast Meridian

That I commune with the dead as I oil your feet. My house at the throat of the river, the door to this world, I wait for you. That I ask of the spirit and receive the knowledges: yerbabuena, vela de virgen, baño de alhucema. Cut the joint at the hoof & fatten the soup. Accept this offering, thank the plant. That I love you with the knowledge of our ways lost to violence. That you will call me up from the silt in your bones.

Read More >
Javier Zamora
2024
Unaccompanied: Poems

Mamá, you left me.   Papá, you left me.

Abuelos, I left you.   Tías, I left you.

Cousins, I’m here.   Cousins, I left you.

Tías, welcome.   Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.

Mamá, let’s return.   Papá ¿por qué?

Mamá, marry for papers.   Papá, marry for papers.

Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.

I won’t marry for papers.   I might marry for papers.

I won’t be back soon.   I can’t vote anywhere,

I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.

Read More >
Milo Wippermann
2023
Joan of Arkansas

Last year, Simone had been voted “Most Christ-Like” of the Domremy Catholic High School Freshman Class. 
            Privately, she hoped that she did have God’s grace to thank for her ease in the world. Something about grace, even though one need not do anything to receive it, denoted heroism. It was heroism in the sense of being singled out and chosen—an idea that accounted for and made tolerable the ways in which Simone felt entirely alone.
            Nothing, she knew, had been easy for Joan—nothing except talking to God. “If you want God to talk to you, you have to be silent,” Simone knew from one of Joan’s videos. She had attempted silence in every form she could fathom but even her attempts felt loud. How to empty herself of her self, she wondered.

Read More >
Shane McCrae
2011
Mule
Poems

And we divorced in the survives            and O

It was a comedy            and first you ever slept with me

And marry me and marry me and O

 

How fat I used to be

Read More >
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.)

Read More >
Roger Fanning
1992
The Island Itself
Poems

From a side lane soft with lunar mulch

and thistledown I saw them, clipped alone

on a clothesline, a pair of diaphanous panties

as wide as an elephant’s forehead.

I sighed across the boy-mown lawn

and they shook as though they shed blessings

to the moon and her tongue-tied exiles.

Who would dare pour such panties

along his arms and throat? A murderer, maybe.

The Milky Way was pavement

compared to their luxury. I knew

I wouldn’t outwalk their whispers that night.

 

Next morning my feet felt like mallets.

I was back in the world where people

wear out, embarrassed by beautiful things,

and a garment fit for a goddess is nothing but big.

Read More >