Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé Fiction 2025
Tony Kushner Drama 1990
Natalie Kusz Nonfiction 1989
Suji Kwock Kim Poetry 2006
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
Hilary Leichter Fiction 2026
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

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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Matthew Stadler
1995
The Sex Offender
A Novel

“Do you masturbate?” he pried.

 

“Only alone, by myself.” I felt him bristle at my insolence.

 

“Do you work with appropriate fantasies?”

 

“Work?”

 

“You know, do you masturbate to appropriate fantasies before indulging in your inappropriate ones?” He’d given me very specific instructions about this. He scolded my silence by scooting his chair forward till I could smell the odor of his leg.

 

“Sometimes. Sometimes I forget.”

 

THE SEX OFFENDER © 1994 by Matthew Stadler; reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Inc.

 

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Mary Swander
1994
Heaven-And-Earth House
Poems

We are the nothing-to-lose ones,

the try-anything-once ones,

weed seeds inside our cells –

dandelion, nettle, lizard tail –

roots sunk in, for it is the tips

that count, reaching out to tap

new moisture. Roots, stems, leaves,

the stomata, those little mouths

opening, closing, sucking in air

in the evening when we boil

wild ginger and sleep in its vapor.

Like cures like, we hear in the morning

when we brush ourselves with

vegetable fiber in the shower,

beat ourselves with our fists.

(This is no crazier than anything else.)

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Seth Kantner
2005
Ordinary Wolves
A Novel

I remembered the sweet powerful taste of pop. Tommy Feathers had stopped for coffee when he was hunting wolverine. He tossed a bulged red and white can on the chopping block. “You’ll have tat one springtime,” he joked. He was sober; that meant he was laughing and friendly, not frothing about naluagmius starving his family, stealing food out of his children’s mouths. We had sat around waiting for it to thaw. We could have bought pops in Takunak but according to Abe, pop cost money, wasted aluminum, and was bad for our teeth. Nothing for something. Why not drink water? Now Iris was describing the high school friends and fun we’d always worried we missed out on, and I wondered why I hadn’t bought myself a few Cokes.

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Victor LaValle
2004
The Ecstatic
A Novel

My sister was enrolled in a beauty pageant for virgins, a contest I thought she could win. She was cute enough, but also, how many teenage hymens were left in America anymore? Even the emu-faced girls had been initiated by twelve. Fewer contestants fueled better odds.

 

- You might actually win, I told Nabisase.

 

- I’m glad that this surprises you, she said.

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Hansol Jung
2018
Wild Goose Dreams
A Play

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CHORUS

-   Search: Husband affair asset division.

-   Askkorealaw dot com Q and A

- Q. My dirty husband is sexing with our daughter’s tutor. Will I get rich if I divorce him or should I make him suffer?

-   A. Make him suffer.

 

MINSUNG

Although, my wife and daughter live in America, I don’t think they’d know if I lit myself on fire,

how will they know that I’m having an affair?

That was a joke.

They call us the goose fathers, I could look that up for you.

 

CHORUS

-   Search: Goose father origin

-   Wikipedia Korea

 

MINSUNG

Aha.

 

CHORUS

-   The goose father is a Korean man who works in Korea while his wife and children stay in an English-speaking country for the sake of the children’s education. / The term is

 

MINSUNG

The term is inspired by the fact that geese migrate, just as the goose dad must travel a great distance to see his family.

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