Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Adam Johnson Fiction 2009
Sarah Stewart Johnson Nonfiction 2021
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 Fiction 2005
John Keene Poetry 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
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé Fiction 2025
Tony Kushner Drama 1990
Natalie Kusz Nonfiction 1989
Suji Kwock Kim Poetry 2006

Selected winners

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.

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Louis Edwards
1994
Ten Seconds
A Novel

“Malcolm is dead,” Eddie kept hearing as he raced to the shop. As he got closer, he saw the flashing lights, and the siren that had been only an eerie, barely audible musical accompaniment to his thoughts began to register as belonging to an ambulance and not as being a regular plant alarm. He knew that he would not cry no matter how awful it was; he never cried. That was one thing he never had to worry about. If one of them had to be killed here, it was better that it was Malcolm—because if Eddie had been killed, Malcolm would have cried like a baby.

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Tope Folarin
2021
A Particular Kind of Black Man
A Novel

   We had dozens of books. My father never bought us toys, and he always claimed that he was too broke to buy us new clothes, but somehow we each received at least three new books each month. Most of our books were nonfiction - short biographies, children’s encyclopedias, textbooks - because Dad was convinced that novels were for entertainment purposes only, and he always told us that we would have time for entertainment when we were old enough to make our own decisions. So Tayo and I would huddle in a single bed, his or mine, with a biography about George Washington, or a book about the invention of the telephone, and each of us would read a page and hand the flashlight over. 
  We eventually grew tired of these books, though, so we began to make up our own stories. Actually, Tayo made them up. Even though Tayo was younger than me, even though he looked up to me and followed me in every other part of our lives, he was a much better storyteller than I was. He was almost as good as Mom. 
     He always began: 
     “Once upon a time . . .”
 

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Amy Leach
2010
Things That Are
Essays

In the seventeenth century, his Holiness the Pope adjudged beavers to be fish. In retrospect, that was a zoologically illogical decision; but beavers were not miffed at being changed into fish. They decided not to truckle their new specification, not to be perfect fish, textbook fish; instead they became fanciful fish, the first to have furry babies, the first to breathe air and the first fish to build for themselves commodious conical fortresses in the water.

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Clifford Thompson
2013
Love for Sale and Other Essays

At my desk, with my pen, pencil, markers, ruler, and thick white paper, I was in command. And when I drew the superhero who was my alter-ego, I gave him—i.e., myself—what in all my shyness I didn’t have: a girlfriend. She was as pretty as my limited skills could make her. Her name was Laura.

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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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