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Name Sort descending	Genre	Year
Jenny Johnson	Poetry	2015
Adam Johnson	Fiction	2009
Taylor Johnson	Poetry	2024
Sarah Stewart Johnson	Nonfiction	2021
Denis Johnson	Fiction	1986
R. Kikuo Johnson	Fiction	2023
R.S. Jones	Fiction	1992
A. Van Jordan	Poetry	2004
Dan Josefson	Fiction	2015
Rajiv Joseph	Drama	2009
Hansol Jung	Drama	2018
Cynthia Kadohata	Fiction	1991
Agymah Kamau	Fiction	2003
Ilya Kaminsky	Poetry	2005
Joan Naviyuk Kane	Poetry	2009
Seth Kantner	Fiction	2005
Mary Karr	Poetry	1989
Douglas Kearney	Poetry	2008
John Keene	Poetry	2005
John Keene	Fiction	2005
Brigit Pegeen Kelly	Poetry	1996
Randall Kenan	Fiction	1994
Randall Kenan	Nonfiction	1994
Brad Kessler	Fiction	2007
Laleh Khadivi	Fiction	2008
Sylvia Khoury	Drama	2021
Alice Sola Kim	Fiction	2016
James Kimbrell	Poetry	1998
Lily King	Fiction	2000
Linda Kinstler	Nonfiction	2023
Brian Kiteley	Fiction	1996
Matthew Klam	Fiction	2001
Kevin Kling	Drama	1993
Wayne Koestenbaum	Nonfiction	1994
Wayne Koestenbaum	Poetry	1994

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Selected winners

Thomas Sayers Ellis

2005

The Maverick Room

Poems

Go Ju go Ju go.

Lightskinned Rainbow

eclipsed Tick Tock,

his chocolate walk-partner.

Incestuous Pootchie and Tan.

Both Frogs. Squirrel. Crazy ass Sponge.

Bama Duke’s lopsided,

sticky daughter, Peaches.

Out b-shaped barber,

Blinky. We miss you,

Missy, rest in peace.

John Rocks-on-Rocks.

The Young Dillingers.

Freckles versus Baby Tim.

Cabalou stuttering,

i-m-m-mi-t-ta-ting Johnny Lips.

Hillbilly, Lefty, Itchy and Skip.

Dootie Bug’s first

baby’s mama, leaving.

Tootie had Fin.

Karen Hao

2026

Empire of AI

Over the years, I’ve found only one metaphor
that encapsulates the nature of what these AI
power players are: empires. During the long
era of European colonialism, empires seized
and extracted resources that were not their
own and exploited the labor of the people
they subjugated to mine, cultivate, and
refine those resources for the empire’s
enrichment. They projected racist,
dehumanizing ideas of their own superiority
and modernity to justify—and even entice the
conquered into accepting—the invasion of
sovereignty, the theft, and the subjugation.
They justified their quest for power by the
need to compete with other empires: In an
arms race, all bets are off. All this
ultimately served to entrench each empire’s
power and to drive its expansion and
progress. In the simplest terms, empires
amassed extraordinary riches across space and
time, through imposing a colonial world
order, at great expense to everyone else.

Major Jackson

2003

Leaving Saturn

Poems

In that darkness,

Speakers rose like

Housing projects,

Moonlight diamonded

Mesh-wire panes.

What was it that bloomed

Around his curled

Body when the lights

Came up, fluorescent,

Vacant, garish?

The gym throbbed

With beats & rage

And his eyes darted

Like a man nailed

To a burning crucifix.

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

2019

Heads of the Colored People

Stories

Jilly took her head out of the oven mainly because it was hot and the gas did not work independently of the pilot light. Stupid new technology. And preferring her head whole and her new auburn sew-in weave unsinged, and having no chloroform in the house, she conceded that she would not go out like a poet. But she updated her status, just the same:

A final peace out

before I end it all.

Treat your life like bread,

no edge too small

to butter.

Jilly was not a poet or even an aspiring one. She just liked varying her posts as much as possible.

Copyright © by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. From Heads of the Colored People: Stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. Published by 37 Ink/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.