Search All Winners

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

Amy Herzog
2011
4000 Miles / After the Revolution
Two Plays

VERA: Have I told you about the lesbian who tried to seduce / me?

 

EMMA: Yes.

 

VERA: She showed up at the house, saying she has suck a big, whaddayacallit.

 

EMMA: Clitoris.

 

VERA: Clitoris, right, and she said it would be terrific, and all that. And I said no thank you, and she went away. Nice woman. Very pretty, actually.

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Salvatore Scibona
2009
The End
A Novel

At times you could not fully expand your chest to take in breath, such was the push of the bodies on your body. And the kids in the trees throwing spiny sweet-gum monkey balls at your head. There were moments you felt you might be crushed. It had happened, in 1947. A Slovak woman and her babe in arms were crushed right here. Imagine killing somebody with your chest, a pair of hot corpses borne along by the pressing of your body and other people’s bodies—and still you came, out of this instinct to cram into the streets, because the body, despite reason, insisted on satisfying an urge that nothing in your brittle, private, homebound individual interior could satisfy.

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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.
 

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Yiyun Li
2006
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Stories

Several times a day Granny Lin bathes Old Tang: in the morning and before bedtime, and whenever he wets or dirties himself. The private bathroom is what Granny Lin likes best about her marriage. For all her life, she has used public bathrooms, fighting with other slippery bodies for the lukewarm water drizzling from the rusty showers. Now that she has a bathroom all to herself, she never misses any chance to use it.

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Tommy Pico
2018
Nature Poem

My family’s experience isn’t fodder

for artwork, says Nature in btwn make outs

 

But you’ll drink yourself to sleep?

 

Who is the “I” but its inheritances—Let’s play a game

 

Let’s say Southern California’s water is oil

 

Let’s say Halliburton is the San Diego Flume Company

and I am descended from a long line of wildfires

I mean tribal leaders

 

The Cuyamaca Flume transported mountain runoff and river water into the heart of San Diego. Construction began illegally, in secret, in the 1880s. The creek bed dried. The plants died. The very best citizens of San Diego called it “deluded sentimentality” to give Indians any land or water. As if these are things, stuff to be owned or sold off

 

I am missing many cousins, have you seen them?

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