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
Michael R. Jackson Drama 2019
Mitchell S. Jackson Fiction 2016
Major Jackson Poetry 2003
Tyehimba Jess Poetry 2006

Selected winners

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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Franz Wright
1991
Entry in an Unknown Hand
Poems

The street deserted. Nobody,

only you and one last

dirt colored robin,

fastened to its branch

against the wind. It seems

you have arrived

late, the city unfamiliar,

the address lost.

And you made such a serious effort –

pondered the obstacles deeply,

tried to be your own critic.

Yet no one came to listen.

Maybe they came, and then left.

After you traveled so far,

just to be there.

It was a failure, that is what they will say.

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Terese Marie Mailhot
2019
Heart Berries
A Memoir

Our culture is based in the profundity things carry. We’re always trying to see the world the way our ancestors did—we feel less of a relationship to the natural world. There was a time when we dictated our beliefs and told ourselves what was real, or what was wrong or right. There weren’t any abstractions. We knew that our language came before the world.

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August Wilson
1986
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
A Play

TOLEDO: Go ahead, then. Spell it. Music. Spell it.

 

LEVEE: I can spell it, nigger! M-U-S-I-K. There!

            (He reaches for the money.)

 

TOLEDO: Naw! Naw! Leave that money alone! You ain’t spelled it.

 

LEVEE: What you mean I ain’t spelled it? I said M-U-S-I-K!

 

TOLEDO: That ain’t how you spell it! That ain’t how you spell it! It’s M-U-S-I-C! C, nigger. Not K! M-U-S-I-C!

 

LEVEE: What you mean, C? Who say it’s C?

 

TOLEDO: Cutler. Slow Drag, Tell this fool.

            (They look at each other and then away.)

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!

            (TOLEDO picks up the money and hands LEVEE his dollar back.)

Here’s your dollar back, Levee. I done won it, you understand. I done won the dollar. But if don’t nobody know but me, how am I gonna prove it to you?

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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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Ada Zhang
2024
The Sorrows of Others: Stories

Prancing down the building’s stairs, Hui concentrated again on the boy who had stopped returning her calls. Acknowledging another’s pain obscured one’s own. Hui wasn’t ready yet to accept that. From the window, Meng watched her granddaughter walk up the tree-lined street. The old woman’s longing was like that of a child, featuring prominently in her eyes, which captured that spirit from her youth. It would have been easy for anyone to picture what she had looked like back then, if anyone had been there.

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