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

Aisha Sabatini Sloan
2025
Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit: Essays

The Sade who joins you at the hotel restaurant is not the Sade who gave you all the love she got she gave you more than she could give she gave you love. But she is a Sade who, you realize after a bit of googling, can flex muscles in her leg that most people will never know about and who may be one of the best dancers in the world even though she went to school to be a doctor. She will talk to you about making paintings in Romania while you eat food that tastes like dreams of food.

A waiter whose persona seems to have been inspired by the Steve Martin hamburger scene in the remake of The Pink Panther keeps pouring wine. You win an argument about the name of a jazz biopic even though your sparring partner has spent some SERIOUS time with Wynton Marsalis. By the end of the day you will have heard stories about artists whose names you have searched for in the stacks of many libraries, like one that begins with “Romie called me one morning” and ends with a dick joke the butt of which is, somehow, the New York Times. You fall asleep in a blue room on a mattress that wants your lower back to just go ahead and peace out. But you feel like the number-one luckiest girl in the world.

Downstairs in the dark, Aunt Jemima smiles from the confines of a painting, giving everybody the middle finger.

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Tyehimba Jess
2006
leadbelly
Poems

Dear Yu Honor

Yu may rmember me when yu visits prison

here I am Walter Boyd Leadbelly #42738

yo best big niger from Sugarland Farm

wit my stella guitar and songs yu like

I play it all like a black machine for yu loud an slow

Down in the valley    What a frend we have in

Jesus an I Sugarland shuffle like pickin cotton far as

eye cn see I need my freedom like yu said yu was gone give me

yur honor all I need a second chance rmembr me

yu sed I was som niger   som niger need they pardon

GOVERNOR

thank yu for yo kind kind hand yo wisdum.

 

Copyright 2004 by Tyehimba Jess. Published by Verse Press. Reprinted with permission of the author and Wave Books. 

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Frank Stewart
1986
Flying the Red Eye
Poems

Circling slow and dripping like a fat June bug in the rain,

turbos throbbing in the labored

dark over Chicago, the Electra turned, one wing

pivoted up, like an old dog tilted on three legs,

smelling dank, an old heaviness in him, as though

he were about to tumble over toward those glorious,

snowy lights below. There might have been

freezing sleet as well. In any case, I know

I laughed into a glass half filled with bourbon,

glanced again at the two feathered props

out the window, their cowlings charred and smoky.

But freed all at once from months of killing depression,

elated strangely, almost uplifted.

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John Ash
1986
The Branching Stairs
Poems

You know it too! … The charm of funerals in the rain,

the special effects men with their hoses well aimed,

huge drops exploding on

classically beautiful

black umbrellas.

 

You know them, -

the houses like fat vegetables

stuffed with old lace, ceramics, silverware, dust –

secure as bank vaults.

                                    Who will inherit?

Vittorio is dining with

that Chinese actress again…

Will the kingdom be divided?

Who will keep

the chandeliers in good repair

and tend the lists of public enemies?

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