Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Sarah Stewart Johnson Nonfiction 2021
Denis Johnson Fiction 1986
Adam Johnson Fiction 2009
R. Kikuo Johnson Fiction 2023
Jenny Johnson Poetry 2015
Taylor Johnson Poetry 2024
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

Selected winners

Hanna Pylväinen
2012
We Sinners
A Novel

Her plan had been to clean in the middle of the night, so her mother would wake to an empty kitchen sink, but as she stood in the foyer, the bathroom fan beating loudly and uselessly, the mess before her made her want to cry; being in a family of eleven made her want to cry, the way someone had soaked up the dog’s pee but not thrown away the paper towel, the way responsibility divided by eleven meant no one was really responsible.

Read More >
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
2024
Snow in Midsummer
A Play

DOU YI

My hands were packed in dry ice

Flown across the Pacific and

Stitched onto a man who lost his overseas.

My palms open doors to

Rooms my feet haven't walked through and

Caress a woman my eyes will never see.

It doesn't snow there but my

Nails ache when they touch ice and

Scratch strange characters onto that

Soldier's skin while he's sleeping.

His doctors call it post-traumatic stress but

He knows they're words from a

Language his tongue never learned

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice

Across the East Sea a yam farmer

Uses my corneas to see.

She dreams of snow but thinks

It's ashes from a childhood fire bombing.

On the far side of the Atlantic my stomach digests

Food that never passed through my lips

Food my teeth didn't chew

Food my tongue hasn't tasted

Food that could have made this spirit stronger

And act sooner if someone offered it to Dou Yi.

But my heart--

My heart beats in this town,

Pumping blood through a man

Loved by the son of an official,

A son who moved Heaven and Earth for

His Happiness.

His Future.

His New Harmony.

These offerings have given me strength

I feel my spirit reviving!

Justice. 

Justice. 

Justice.

Justice and burial for the widow Dou Yi

Justice.

Justice.

Justice.

But how can you bury a woman whose butchered body's still living?

Justice. 

Justice.

That is my heart. It should beat inside me.

 

(Dou Yi thrusts her hand into Rocket's chest and retrieves her heart.)

Read More >
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?

Read More >
Joshua Bennett
2021
The Sobbing School
Poems

Please, excuse my shadow. I can’t 

stop leaving. I don’t know how

to name what I don’t know

 

well enough to render

in a single sitting. Every poem

about us seems an impossible labor,

 

like forgetting the face

of the sea, or trying to find

a more perfect name for water.

Read More >
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
2010
When Skateboards Will Be Free
A Memoir of a Political Childhood

My father believes that the United States is destined one day to be engulfed in a socialist revolution. All revolutions are bloody, he says, but this one will be the bloodiest of them all. The working class—which includes me—will at some point in the not-so-distant future decide to put down the tools of our trade, pour into the streets, beat the police into submission, take over the means of production, and usher in a new epoch—the final epoch—of peace and equality. This revolution is not only inevitable, it is imminent. It is not only imminent, it is quite imminent. And when the time comes, my father will lead it.

Read More >
Jane Springer
2010
Dear Blackbird,
Poems

Whitman kept all the sleepers to himself but one, & she wasn’t just a demon

in the sack. When she wasn’t sleeping by daylight, she was the demon

slinging a house shoe at her children over the front seat of the Plymouth

while simultaneously steering it between the orgasmic, careening semis &

Beetle Bug Blue, Piddiddle, Beetle Bug Black.

Read More >