Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Virginia Grise Drama 2013
Rinne Groff Drama 2005
Paul Guest Poetry 2007
Stephen Adly Guirgis Drama 2006
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Nonfiction 2022
Danai Gurira Drama 2012
Daniel Hall Poetry 1998
Lisa Halliday Fiction 2017
W. David Hancock Drama 1998
Karen Hao Nonfiction 2026
Kent Haruf Fiction 1986
Michael Haskell Poetry 1999
Ehud Havazelet Fiction 1999
Terrance Hayes Poetry 1999
Alan Heathcock Fiction 2012
Marwa Helal Poetry 2021
Amy Herzog Drama 2011
Emily Hiestand Poetry 1990
Rick Hilles Poetry 2008
Lucas Hnath Drama 2015
Eva Hoffman Nonfiction 1992
Donovan Hohn Nonfiction 2008
John Holman Fiction 1991
Mary Hood Fiction 1994
Jay Hopler Poetry 2009
Michelle Huneven Fiction 2002
Samuel Hunter Drama 2012
Hajar Hussaini Poetry 2026
Ishion Hutchinson Poetry 2013
Naomi Iizuka Drama 1999
James Ijames Drama 2017
Mitchell S. Jackson Fiction 2016
Major Jackson Poetry 2003
Michael R. Jackson Drama 2019
Tyehimba Jess Poetry 2006

Selected winners

Diannely Antigua
2020
Ugly Music

The last time I cried to your picture

was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.

It was about her and you and how

all the things I could touch would disappear,

like your hand or dirty boxers on the floor,

or the liver spots on her arms, the space

of her missing tooth.

 

I’ve been having that dream again.

The one where I make a fortune selling my used underwear 

and I buy her a tombstone. 

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Mary Swander
1994
Heaven-And-Earth House
Poems

We are the nothing-to-lose ones,

the try-anything-once ones,

weed seeds inside our cells –

dandelion, nettle, lizard tail –

roots sunk in, for it is the tips

that count, reaching out to tap

new moisture. Roots, stems, leaves,

the stomata, those little mouths

opening, closing, sucking in air

in the evening when we boil

wild ginger and sleep in its vapor.

Like cures like, we hear in the morning

when we brush ourselves with

vegetable fiber in the shower,

beat ourselves with our fists.

(This is no crazier than anything else.)

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Sylvia Khoury
2021
Against the Hillside

ANTHONY
I’m sorry, sir.
I don’t think I understand.


MATT
She took her kid and left in the middle of the night.
To go where?
She’s in the middle of the desert.


ANTHONY
Sir, if I may.


MATT
You may.


ANTHONY
Her leaving
What does any of that have to do with us?


MATT
What does that have to do with us?
We did that, Anthony.
We broke that family up.


A moment.


MATT
Do you not understand that?


ANTHONY
It doesn’t matter what I understand, sir.

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Ama Codjoe
2023
Bluest Nude
Poems

The man asks, Do you have a family? My thinking

brushes the air between us like a wet mark

 

stains white paper. My mother’s mother, dead

twenty-two years. A stone house. The ants I’ve killed.

 

Robyne, who, when someone hurls 

toward me a small cruelty, cries. Memphis in August.

 

My twin brother crunching ice. All the cousins

I’ve made. Walking amongst cedar trees.

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Jo Ann Beard
1997
The Boys of My Youth
A Memoir

I went to visit Grandma and Ralph for a week right after having learned how to whistle. I whistled at all times, with dedication and complete concentration. When I was asked a question I whistled the answer, I whistled along with people as they talked, I whistled the answer while I worked, I whistled while I played. Eventually they made a rule that whistling was forbidden in their house.

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Stephen Wright
1990
M31
A Family Romance

“There is an ocean of dreams,” Maryse was explaining, “that our sleeping heads dip back into late at night. The tides go in and out, cleansing the shore. Who we are is whatever silhouettes against that great sea. It is deep and vast and strong, and even in the clearest moment of the brightest day something is leaking in, a permanent trickle in the plumbing. Sometimes, in some of us, things collapse, but now the moment is approaching when the wave will break to carry us all away. This will happen. Consider the signs. Learn how to float.”

 

“But what’s all this got to do with UFOs?” asked Beale.

 

“They’re the openings the dreams come through.”

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