Search All Winners

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

Selected winners

Thylias Moss
1991
Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky
Poems

Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for

And flew out of the stream

It was not dreaming

It had no ambition but confusion

 

In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun

and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl

when it’s broiled

 

The Titanic is the one that got away.

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Tyree Daye
2019
River Hymns

1. Boy, don’t let a shadow in you, I never want to see the devil in your eyes, a traceable line of your daddy’s.

2. If you dream about fish or a river, somebody’s pregnant, we need the water more than it needs us.

3. Dream about snakes, you haven’t been living right, wash your hands of it.

4. They’re shooting boys who look like you. You know my number, use it, keep all your blood.

5. Stay

6. Alive.

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Julie Sheehan
2008
Orient Point
Poems

Coyotes invade. They claim to be the truth.

Black bears nose the bougainvillea, moving

eastward, indiscriminate, original.

Our sinks back up, our toilets will not drain,

our nature disobediently tends toward nature.

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Raymond Abbott
1985
That Day in Gordon
A Novel

Still behind him was that damn coyote. A determined critter, he was. He hadn’t caught sight of him for at least an hour, but he felt his presence out there. At first he had feared him. Now he didn’t. If circumstances were different he might have welcomed the company of a coyote on a lonely walk on a snowy night. At best, the coyote’s presence was disconcerting. He was puzzled. Why would a coyote be so determined? Poor animal. It had been such a hard winter for man and beast.

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Claire Luchette
2025
Agatha of Little Neon: A Novel

We didn’t know much about addiction, about homelessness, but we knew how it could look. We’d watched a man nod into his own lap in the Tim Hortons on Abbott Street, had seen kids hawk lone red and white carnations in plastic sleeves to drivers on the interchange off-ramp. We’d heard the spellbound murmurs of the woman who sat all day at the bus shelter on Fillmore. We offered these people things we thought they’d want. Some days one said yes to a cheeseburger or a Filet-O-Fish or a hot coffee, and other days no one wanted anything but whatever coins and cash we had.

We were many times not helpful at all. One winter, Mary Lucille came across a man asleep next to the grocery carts in the Tops lot. She tapped him on the shoulder and asked, when he roused, if he wanted a ride to the shelter. He shook his head. Or, she said, she could take him to McDonald’s for a chicken sandwich, or fries, or a parfait. 

“A parfait?” the man said. He squinted at her. “What the hell is a parfait?” 

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Nadia Owusu
2019
Aftershocks

            Once, when I was a very little girl in a bubble bath, I asked my father why I had a belly button. He was sitting on the toilet lid reading while I splashed. He peered at me over the top of his book.

             “So you know where your center is,” he said.

           “Why do I need to know where my center is?” I asked.

            “So you don’t lose your balance,” he said. “Your center is where all the different parts of who you are come together. It used to connect you to your mother and to the beginning of human history in Africa.” I cannot be certain this is true, but when I remember him saying this, I hear his voice catch on the word mother.

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