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

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?”

Kirsten Bakis

2004

Lives of the Monster Dogs

A Novel

The photo showed a dog, standing on its hind legs, being helped from the door of a helicopter by a serious-looking man in a down vest. The dog seemed to stand about the same height as the man, and looked like a Malamute. The strange thing about it, besides its larger-than-average size, was the fact that it was wearing a dark-colored jacket which looked like part of an old-fashioned military uniform, and a pair of spectacles, and that it appeared to have hands instead of front paws. In one of those gloved hands it held a cane, which was pointed at an awkward angle, probably because of the way the man was holding on to that foreleg just above the elbow. The other hand gripped the side of the helicopter doorway. The expression on the animal’s face was one of terror. Its lips were slightly parted, its ears were pointing straight backward, and its eyes were wide.

Karen Hao

2026

Empire of AI

Over the years, I’ve found only one metaphor
that encapsulates the nature of what these AI
power players are: empires. During the long
era of European colonialism, empires seized
and extracted resources that were not their
own and exploited the labor of the people
they subjugated to mine, cultivate, and
refine those resources for the empire’s
enrichment. They projected racist,
dehumanizing ideas of their own superiority
and modernity to justify—and even entice the
conquered into accepting—the invasion of
sovereignty, the theft, and the subjugation.
They justified their quest for power by the
need to compete with other empires: In an
arms race, all bets are off. All this
ultimately served to entrench each empire’s
power and to drive its expansion and
progress. In the simplest terms, empires
amassed extraordinary riches across space and
time, through imposing a colonial world
order, at great expense to everyone else.