Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Catherine Lacey Fiction 2016
Mary LaChapelle Fiction 1988
Rattawut Lapcharoensap Fiction 2010
Rickey Laurentiis Poetry 2018
Victor LaValle Fiction 2004
Andrea Lawlor Fiction 2020
Amy Leach Nonfiction 2010
Li-Young Lee Poetry 1988
Suzannah Lessard Nonfiction 1995
Dana Levin Poetry 2005
Mark Levine Poetry 1993
Yiyun Li Fiction 2006
Ralph Lombreglia Fiction 1998
Ralph Lombreglia Nonfiction 1998
Layli Long Soldier Poetry 2016
Claire Luchette Fiction 2025
Ling Ma Fiction 2020
Nathaniel Mackey Fiction 1993
Nathaniel Mackey Poetry 1993
Rosemary Mahoney Nonfiction 1994
Terese Marie Mailhot Nonfiction 2019
Megha Majumdar Fiction 2022
Mona Mansour Drama 2012
Micheline A. Marcom Fiction 2006
J.S. Marcus Fiction 1992
Ben Marcus Fiction 1999
Anthony Marra Fiction 2012
Dionisio D. Martínez Poetry 1993
Nina Marie Martínez Fiction 2006
Cate Marvin Poetry 2007
Jesse McCarthy Nonfiction 2022
Shane McCrae Poetry 2011
Tarell Alvin McCraney Drama 2007
Alice McDermott Fiction 1987
Reginald McKnight Fiction 1995

Selected winners

Sherwin Bitsui
2006
Shapeshift
Poems

Turn signals blink through ice in the skin.

Snake dreams uncoil,

                        burrow into the spine of books.

Night spills from cracked eggs.

Thin hands vein oars in a canyon bed.

We follow deer tracks back to the insertion of her tongue.

Read More >
Yannick Murphy
1990
Stories in Another Language

I thought, I bet the daughter’s glad she’s dead, because what her mother was doing, throwing herself into the grave on top of the box like that, looked funny. It looked funny because her mother was fat, and it looked so much like the mother was doing the Fat Man Dance, because her arms were spread out too, as if she were waiting for her daughter to spread out her arms also, and then they could hold hands and smack bellies together and dance in circles on the box just the way we always did in the summer when we did the Fat Man Dance. Because we always did the Fat Man Dance in the summer when we ran around with no clothes on and danced a lot because it was summer.

Read More >
Nana Nkweti
2022
Walking on Cowrie Shells
Stories

Hours later, Temperance is leading a “Mommyhood: The Christian Way” workshop for unwed mothers. She takes deep breaths, still trying to channel her mother’s certitude that this child was meant to be, ordained. The mothers around her are lollipop young, mainly from the projects, and chockablock with children. She can almost look at them now and not hurt. Before, her ovaries would ache just to be in this room with so many women who seemed to get pregnant if you so much as blew on them. Shanice begat Shanice Jr. begat Lativia begat LaRenée begat Jamelia begat Jameka. Begat, begetting, begotten.

Temperance had shared these thorny thoughts with Andrew once—confession, allegedly good for the soul and all. She had whispered that night, but her grievances somehow echoed in the cloistered silence of their bedroom. Why, Andrew, why? Why would God bless them and not her? Hadn’t she done everything right, everything expected? Waited to get her JD, her MRS. Why was she still waiting on her happily ever after? Andrew knuckled tears from her cheeks, his eyes filled with such tender disappointment, as he reminded her she was better than that, a woman of God—above such pretty, elitist notions. She bowed her head then. She listened as he prayed.

But sometimes, Lord. Sometimes.

Read More >
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?” 

Read More >
Kayleb Rae Candrilli
2019
What Runs Over

I imagine my daddy’s mind

looks most like broken
 

dryer machines

scattered in a forest,

 

field mice living

in the leftover lint.

 

I imagine it looks

like stepped-on

 

syringes, too,

flies stooping

 

down to sop up

all the sweet.

 
Read More >
Reinaldo Povod
1987
Cuba & His Teddy Bear
A Play

CUBA: If you wanna jump offa the Empire State Building but you live up in the Bronx—

 

JACKIE: Or Brooklyn—where I live.

 

CUBA: Anywhere.

 

JACKIE: Staten Island.

 

CUBA: If you ain’t got money for your token, you better beg, borrow, or steal. And if yer old enough to beg, you’re old enough to steal. So you end up what? You end up forgetting yer problems ‘cause you got money in yer pockets—and you’re living a life of crime.

Read More >