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

Megha Majumdar
2022
A Burning
A Novel

“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm. 

“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.” 

“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply. 

Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.

Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue. “What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says. 

We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.” 

Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.
 
“Go down,” she says. 

When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.” 

I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps.

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Vu Tran
2009
Las Vegas Noir

Six months ago, before all this, I drove into Las Vegas on a hot August twilight. My first time in the city. From the highway, I could see the Strip in the far distance, but also a lone dark cloud above it, flushed on a bed of light, glowing alien and purplish in the sky. My tired, pulpy brain at the time, I thought it was a UFO or something and nearly hit the truck ahead of me. Fifteen minutes later, at a gas station, I was told about the beam of light from atop that pyramid casino and how you can even see the beam from space, given no clouds were in the way. My disappointment surprised me.

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Brian Blanchfield
2016
Proxies
Essays Near Knowing

What you type and submit appears to you attributed to You. What he replies and enters comes from Partner. There is, as it turns out, a lot to say while watching Partner look at you watching. He is, to begin with, in a room of some kind, particular, contingent, “real.” With art and clocks and books and pillows and cigarettes and mail and daylight, or lamplight, with a bed or desk or basement sofa, with doors you can ask him to open, bags he may or may not empty, of content you may deduce about. The bottoms of his socks are dirty. You give it to him that his socks are dirty, that his door is ajar, that his grin is telling. “Partner: Are you for real?”

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Lauren Yee
2019
The Great Leap

WEN CHANG

he was leading students in an obscene chant.

                                                                          

SAUL

what'd he say?

                                                                          

WEN CHANG

"u.s.a. u.s.a."

                                                                          

SAUL

oh come ON, that's every titty bar in america.

                                                                          

WEN CHANG

surrounded by student protestors in white headbands. it was a clear political protest. a declaration of war.

                                                                          

SAUL

war?! are you crazy?

                                                                          

WEN CHANG

less than twenty-four hours on chinese soil and this is what he does. how could you do this to me?

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Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
2005
Madeleine Is Sleeping
A Novel

A grotesquely fat woman lives in the farthest corner of the village. Her name is Matilde. When she walks to market, she must gather up her fat just as another woman gathers up her skirts, daintily pinching it between her fingers and hooking it over her wrists. Matilde’s fat moves about her gracefully, sighing and rustling with her every gesture. She walks as if enveloped by a dense storm cloud, from which the real, sylph-like Matilde is waiting to emerge, blinding as a sunbeam.

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Amy Wilentz
1990
Rainy Season
Haiti - Then and Now

…after dozens of visits, I stopped buying the paintings. Scenes of bright peasant life, or lovely little children in uniforms filing into school, pictures of grand bourgeois families dancing in a hall beneath towering hi-fi speakers, or of shocking voodoo ceremonies in blacks and reds with decapitated chickens flapping in blood and women writhing, panoramas of bustling, abundant markets, paintings of primeval forests, with lions, giraffes, panthers and other animals no Haitian has ever seen at home, where the wildest animal is the crocodile or the flamingo, or the tarantula. It’s hard to keep looking at those paintings, but these Haitian artists paint them over and over again, as though they can’t get this nightmare out of their system. For months, a vendor tried to sell me this one painting, of a church interior, because I made the mistake of looking at it. He started at thirty dollars, laughably high but negotiable. Still, for a long time I couldn’t bring myself to buy it, no matter how badly the stooped and stuttering art dealer wanted to get rid of it, no matter how low he would go. I had promised myself no more paintings.

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