Search All Winners

Name Sort descending Genre Year
Jesse McCarthy Nonfiction 2022
Shane McCrae Poetry 2011
Tarell Alvin McCraney Drama 2007
Alice McDermott Fiction 1987
Reginald McKnight Fiction 1995
John McManus Fiction 2000
James McMichael Poetry 1995
Scott McPherson Drama 1991
Jane Mead Poetry 1992
Suketu Mehta Fiction 1997
Suketu Mehta Nonfiction 1997
Morgan Meis Nonfiction 2013
Ellen Meloy Nonfiction 1997
Michael Meyer Nonfiction 2009
Meg Miroshnik Drama 2012
Albert Mobilio Fiction 2000
Albert Mobilio Poetry 2000
Gothataone Moeng Fiction 2024
Lara Mimosa Montes Fiction 2026
C.E. Morgan Fiction 2013
Wright Morris Fiction 1985
Wright Morris Nonfiction 1985
Sylvia Moss Poetry 1988
Thylias Moss Poetry 1991
Brighde Mullins Drama 2001
Nami Mun Fiction 2009
Manuel Muñoz Fiction 2008
Yannick Murphy Fiction 1990
Yxta Maya Murray Fiction 1999
Lawrence Naumoff Fiction 1990
Nana Nkweti Fiction 2022
Howard Norman Fiction 1985
Bruce Norris Drama 2006
Josip Novakovich Fiction 1997
Josip Novakovich Nonfiction 1997

Selected winners

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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Aria Aber
2020
Hard Damage

To miss my life in Kabul is to tongue 
pears laced with needles. I had no life
in Kabul. How, then, can I trust my mind’s long corridor,
its longing for before? I have a faint depression
polluting my heart, sings the lake. That there is music 
in everything if you tune into it
devastates me. Even trauma sounds like Traum
the German word for dream

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Rinne Groff
2005
The Ruby Sunrise
A Play

LULU: Mr. Marcus, I didn’t even want to waste your time. Pride and Prejudice is not a book that makes for a teleplay.

 

MARTIN: Philco’s killing us with the class acts.

 

LULU: There’s more to classy material than rich people in mansions talking in high-class accents. There are stories to tell about the little guy, an American guy, and the contributions they make; or even fail to make. You see a bum on the street, or a woman yelling at her kids after working in a factory all day, but to really understand what causes that behavior… Each of these people had goals; they had dreams; they had disappointments. TV can get inside that, can get close, and be honest about it. That’s what’s classy.

 

MARTIN: So no more period pieces?

 

LULU: If they’re topical.

 

MARTIN: Pride and prejudice: sounds topical.

 

LULU: It’s about marriage. Today’s audience has more on their mind than who marries who.

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Marwa Helal
2021
Invasive species

By 1924, there were about 200,000 Arabs living in the United States¹ and by 2000, at least 3.5 million Americans were of Arab descent².

 

It is 2010. A census form arrives in the mail.

 

I check OTHER and write-in: A-R-A-B.

 

In 2016, Obama wants to add a new racial category and has chosen an acronym to describe a group of people: MENA (Middle Eastern and North African)³

 

I note the absence of the word “Arab.”

 

Still, they do not sense us⁴.

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Mia Chung
2023
Catch as Catch Can
A Play

THERESA

I’m worried she’ll be a fish out of water.

 

ROBERTA

When do we meet her? When’re they movin’?


THERESA

Not now. Soon. We’ll see. They’re waiting to see if Mingjing can transfer jobs.


            ROBERTA puts down her cookie.


ROBERTA

What’s her name?

 

THERESA

Minjung.


ROBERTA

Theresa.


            THERESA sips tea.


THERESA

She’s in architecture, works for a big firm out there

 

ROBERTA

(indicating the under-eye skin) Those dark circles, no wonder.

 

THERESA

But she might give it up and teach.

 

ROBERTA

You seen her only once?

 

THERESA

Tim never said any—why would I think

 

ROBERTA

Such a rush.

 

THERESA

My brain’s exploded.

 

ROBERTA

I knew it: how far gone is she?

 

Note: A male actor plays the roles of both THERESA and her son TIM. A second male actor plays the roles of both ROBERTA and her son ROBBIE.

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Nami Mun
2009
Miles from Nowhere
A Novel

Time moved both fast and slow, and neither speed synced up with her fears as she stood at the head of the line. The tellers looked too chipper for a Monday morning. Did they even have money on Mondays? she wondered. Shouldn’t she have come on a Friday? She couldn’t remember why she opened the stickup note, just that she did, and that her boyfriend, the first and only boy she’d ever dated, was the one who had penned it: This is a stickup. Give me all your monie.

 

The misspelling stopped her.

 

“Next in line,” a teller called.

 

Knowledge herself had quit school in the ninth grade but she couldn’t believe that he had misspelled money. “What kind of an idiot can’t spell money?” she told me. “How fucking stupid do you have to be? And if he’s that stupid, how stupid am I for robbing a bank for him?”

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