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

Sarah Ruhl

2003

The Clean House and Other Plays

LORENZO: Let me tell you a story, Tilly. A patient of mine – he thought if he urinated, he would flood his entire village. So he could not urinate! And this was very painful to him. So I tell him a little white lie, I say to him, “Sir, your whole village is on fire.” And suddenly he feels free to urinate. He feels, through this very ordinary physical activity, that he is saving his village again and again.

TILLY: Huh.

LORENZO: Are you afraid of putting out the fires?

Mindy Aloff

1987

Hippo in a Tutu

Dancing in Disney Animation

Even in a traditional "princess" picture, such as the still-popular 1950 Cinderella, the scene with the most romantic magic—the Fred-and-Ginger buoyancy and sense of brimming anticipation—is not, as we would expect, Cinderella's waltz with the Prince in the ballroom. That we only get to glimpse from behind the courtiers watching it—during those moments when the dance isn't interrupted by comic business for secondary characters or by the couple themselves breaking off the dance merely to drink in each other's shadows. The accent is on their private discovery of their feelings, not on the public celebration of their newfound romance. The real dance energy, rather, surges forth in the designing, cutting, and assembly of the heroine's dress in her lonely bedroom by an exaltation of singing mice and birds: a solitary girl's fantasy. The Disney inspirational artist for Cinderella, as for many animated features of the 1950s, was the brilliant and thoughtful painter Mary Blair. Although Blair was frequently heartbroken by what she viewed as the mistranslation of her concepts in the finished films—a feeling that seems to be embodied in the moment when Cinderella's wicked stepmother and stepsisters tear her dress to shreds—throughout the picture you can still see evidence of Blair's deeply unconventional ideas of how stories can be told through synecdoche (key details made to stand for a larger whole) and emotions represented through color and shifts in proportion.

Brontez Purnell

2018

Since I Laid My Burden Down

A Novel

The congregation began to rustle in preparation for Sister Pearl. Sister Pearl had been the choir headmistress for forever and a day. She claimed many times that she lost her voice singing for the devil. Sometime in her twenties she decided she wanted to sing the dirty blues, like Aretha Franklin. She quit the church and started singing along the Chitlin Circuit in Chattanooga, Nashville, Louisville, and on up to Chicago. One day, she said, the Lord took her voice away, and that’s when she returned to church.

Austin Wright

1985

Tony and Susan

A Novel

In the unrealistic days of their marriage there was a question whether she would read what he wrote. He was a beginner and she is a tougher critic than she meant to be. It was touchy, her embarrassment, his resentment. Now in his letter he said, damn! but this book is good. How much he had learned about life and craft. He wanted to show her, let her read and see, judge for herself. She was the best critic he ever had, he said. She could help him too, for in spite of its merits he was afraid the novel lacked something. She would know, she could tell him. Take your time, he said, scribble a few words, whatever pops into your head. Signed, “Your old Edward still remembering.”