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 Poetry 2000
Albert Mobilio Fiction 2000
Gothataone Moeng Fiction 2024
Lara Mimosa Montes Fiction 2026
C.E. Morgan Fiction 2013
Wright Morris Fiction 1985
Wright Morris Nonfiction 1985
Thylias Moss Poetry 1991
Sylvia Moss Poetry 1988
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

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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Frank Stewart
1986
Flying the Red Eye
Poems

Circling slow and dripping like a fat June bug in the rain,

turbos throbbing in the labored

dark over Chicago, the Electra turned, one wing

pivoted up, like an old dog tilted on three legs,

smelling dank, an old heaviness in him, as though

he were about to tumble over toward those glorious,

snowy lights below. There might have been

freezing sleet as well. In any case, I know

I laughed into a glass half filled with bourbon,

glanced again at the two feathered props

out the window, their cowlings charred and smoky.

But freed all at once from months of killing depression,

elated strangely, almost uplifted.

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Shubha Sunder
2025
Optional Practical Training: A Novel

I paused outside Porter Square Station, in my wet clothes, to observe what a sign there called a kinetic sculpture—three elevated red objects shaped like tongues, tumbling about their axes and orbiting a tall white pole. My thoughts circled back to Theta’s shocked expression at my rent, which led me to review my predicted costs—food, transportation, utilities—and wonder if I’d overlooked something. After a brief trance, I descended a long escalator to the commuter rail platform and boarded the train to Wilton. Soon I was passing the same backyards and open spaces I’d sped by in March, no longer barren and covered with dirty snow, but green, with that profusion of young spring leaves I associated with Impressionist paintings. A pond slid into view, its edges blurred by clumps of reeds. The rain started again. It drew long diagonal streaks across the windows. Anyone want to get off at Brandeis? the conductor called as she strode up the aisle. That was a question, she added cheerfully. Not a threat.

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Jody Gladding
1997
Stone Crop
Poems

The shambles of the gods stretches for miles,

a salvage yard where the smell of hot chrome rises,

where finned bodies lie beached and rusting,

and their names recall great chiefs

and tribes and the empowering animals.

 

Thunderbird, Winnebago, Mustang, Pontiac –

you must say these names out loud. You must

strip the radios in which the myths survive.

Repeat: Wi-Yuh returns to abolish the custom of killing

the beasts for their names. Leave the road maps

on the dashboards. Learn the song of spawning fish.

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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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Brian Blanchfield
2016
Proxies
Essays Near Knowing

What you type and submit appears to you attributed to You. What he replies and enters comes from Partner. There is, as it turns out, a lot to say while watching Partner look at you watching. He is, to begin with, in a room of some kind, particular, contingent, “real.” With art and clocks and books and pillows and cigarettes and mail and daylight, or lamplight, with a bed or desk or basement sofa, with doors you can ask him to open, bags he may or may not empty, of content you may deduce about. The bottoms of his socks are dirty. You give it to him that his socks are dirty, that his door is ajar, that his grin is telling. “Partner: Are you for real?”

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