Whiting Award Winners
Since 1985, the Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.
The van’s front windows were slathered with blood, and inside, a whole brood of furry lapdogs were going wild. They leapt over the captain’s chair, running along the dash and gauges, and the dogs were soaked in blood, their fur syrup-streaked, their whiskers drooping with it. One lapdog was desperately pawing red streaks on the glass, so that the driver’s window was greasy with a thick, dirty paste.
My job here is a strange one. The description I found in the classifieds read: “Overnight counselor-in-residence for developmentally disabled teenagers with behavior problems.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But it went on to read: “Some meal preparation required; counselor is able to sleep during shift.”
At the time it seemed that it might suit me, the sleeping part in particular.
Kenosha is hideous behind us, cloaked by this cloud that hangs
On the pigeons flushed out: the last exhalation of the auto assembly.
We wait at the base of the docks, and talk about the White Sox,
Not the Roman Empire. My father and I stare right at it, but talk baseball.
She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.
She makes no sound. She is always alone.
If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in
she leaves. She calls you Dear.
I was thinking of giving her my flowers.
Just now she came over and said,
‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’
She said, ‘No Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’
She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’
I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’
I am a cowry girl, a marine biologist to be exact. The 8-hour move-
ment started in the United States in 1884. Feeling more and more.
Gave birth. Took up the question. 8 hours shall be the norm. Marx:
Slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin
cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded.
The time named. Endorse the same. Half of the same. More pro-
foundly. Therefore be considered a synonym.
People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.
The van’s front windows were slathered with blood, and inside, a whole brood of furry lapdogs were going wild. They leapt over the captain’s chair, running along the dash and gauges, and the dogs were soaked in blood, their fur syrup-streaked, their whiskers drooping with it. One lapdog was desperately pawing red streaks on the glass, so that the driver’s window was greasy with a thick, dirty paste.
My job here is a strange one. The description I found in the classifieds read: “Overnight counselor-in-residence for developmentally disabled teenagers with behavior problems.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant. But it went on to read: “Some meal preparation required; counselor is able to sleep during shift.”
At the time it seemed that it might suit me, the sleeping part in particular.
Kenosha is hideous behind us, cloaked by this cloud that hangs
On the pigeons flushed out: the last exhalation of the auto assembly.
We wait at the base of the docks, and talk about the White Sox,
Not the Roman Empire. My father and I stare right at it, but talk baseball.
She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.
She makes no sound. She is always alone.
If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in
she leaves. She calls you Dear.
I was thinking of giving her my flowers.
Just now she came over and said,
‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’
She said, ‘No Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’
She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’
I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’
I am a cowry girl, a marine biologist to be exact. The 8-hour move-
ment started in the United States in 1884. Feeling more and more.
Gave birth. Took up the question. 8 hours shall be the norm. Marx:
Slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin
cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded.
The time named. Endorse the same. Half of the same. More pro-
foundly. Therefore be considered a synonym.
People in the street referred to her as al-tarsha, the deaf woman, and, among the Arabs in the marketplace, everyone and everything in her household was known in elation to the tarsha: the deaf woman’s father, the deaf woman’s home, her maid, her bicycle, her car, her husband. The motorcycle with which she had won an exhibition race on the Corniche in the early forties and which was later sold to a neighbor continued to be known as the tarsha’s mutusikl. When I was old enough to walk alone on the streets of Ibrahimieh, I discovered that I too was known as the tarsha’s son.