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.
After some time my husband reached over to hold my hand, which reminded me that at least there was this, at least we still had hands that remembered how to love each other, two bone-and-flesh flaps that hadn't complicated their simple love by speaking or thinking or being disappointed or having memories. They just held and were held and that is all. Oh, to be a hand.
She remembers sensing—almost smelling—that he wanted to kill her. Or that for a split second the thought was spreading itself in his mind. She remembers the terrible little theater of his eyes, which she had always thought to be blue. But looking at them in the afternoon glare, she saw that they weren’t even a little bit blue. They were grey.
As Kelly grew more confident, using longer, smoother strokes on her second leg, I became frightened that she’d hurt herself. The more adept she became at shaving, the more I held my breath against the inevitable nick, the free flow of blood from her body. Watching her, I thought about Sean’s wrists, how he had tried to slit them, how he had shown the scratches to my mother, offering them up as evidence of what he had done, as if she would not otherwise believe that he had swallowed handfuls of my father’s heart medicine. And he was right. She could not believe it. It was unbelievable. She made him show her the bottle, near empty now. Was it out of consideration that he had left a few pills for my father?
Javier was crazy about tacos. He loved them the way some men love their women: a nice, hard, firm shell. While many men have fallen to the wayside on account of a woman, it is hard to imagine a taco unraveling a man the way it did Javier. After simple surgery to remove a cyst from his gallbladder, one of Javier’s friends snuck him a couple of hard-shelled tacos. He propped himself up in his bed, the green of his hospital pajamas matching the lettuce in his taco, smiled wide, and dug in. After a good meal, he thanked the Lord for his many blessings, including such good friends, then laid himself down to sleep never to wake again. The taco shell had ripped his stitches as it went down.
Orion shot rabbits, but to tell the truth, it almost sickened Cora to clean and cook them. Stripped of its pelt, the taut body glistened. The small legs put her in mind of fingers. On her plate all she could think of was the pleading eyes. Somehow this did not trouble her about chickens, which she took the pains to behead herself, sometimes chasing the headless flapping bird around the chopping block. Orion plucked the bird for her, and the feathers were saved for a sleeping crib for Madge.
I’m sure you won’t believe this,
but if a policeman walks behind me, I tremble:
What would Shaft do? What would Shaft do?
Bits of my courage flake away like dandruff.
I’m sweating even as I tell you this.
I’m not cool.
I keep the real me tucked beneath a wig,
I’m a small American frog.
I grow beautiful as the theatre dims.
After some time my husband reached over to hold my hand, which reminded me that at least there was this, at least we still had hands that remembered how to love each other, two bone-and-flesh flaps that hadn't complicated their simple love by speaking or thinking or being disappointed or having memories. They just held and were held and that is all. Oh, to be a hand.
She remembers sensing—almost smelling—that he wanted to kill her. Or that for a split second the thought was spreading itself in his mind. She remembers the terrible little theater of his eyes, which she had always thought to be blue. But looking at them in the afternoon glare, she saw that they weren’t even a little bit blue. They were grey.
As Kelly grew more confident, using longer, smoother strokes on her second leg, I became frightened that she’d hurt herself. The more adept she became at shaving, the more I held my breath against the inevitable nick, the free flow of blood from her body. Watching her, I thought about Sean’s wrists, how he had tried to slit them, how he had shown the scratches to my mother, offering them up as evidence of what he had done, as if she would not otherwise believe that he had swallowed handfuls of my father’s heart medicine. And he was right. She could not believe it. It was unbelievable. She made him show her the bottle, near empty now. Was it out of consideration that he had left a few pills for my father?
Javier was crazy about tacos. He loved them the way some men love their women: a nice, hard, firm shell. While many men have fallen to the wayside on account of a woman, it is hard to imagine a taco unraveling a man the way it did Javier. After simple surgery to remove a cyst from his gallbladder, one of Javier’s friends snuck him a couple of hard-shelled tacos. He propped himself up in his bed, the green of his hospital pajamas matching the lettuce in his taco, smiled wide, and dug in. After a good meal, he thanked the Lord for his many blessings, including such good friends, then laid himself down to sleep never to wake again. The taco shell had ripped his stitches as it went down.
Orion shot rabbits, but to tell the truth, it almost sickened Cora to clean and cook them. Stripped of its pelt, the taut body glistened. The small legs put her in mind of fingers. On her plate all she could think of was the pleading eyes. Somehow this did not trouble her about chickens, which she took the pains to behead herself, sometimes chasing the headless flapping bird around the chopping block. Orion plucked the bird for her, and the feathers were saved for a sleeping crib for Madge.
I’m sure you won’t believe this,
but if a policeman walks behind me, I tremble:
What would Shaft do? What would Shaft do?
Bits of my courage flake away like dandruff.
I’m sweating even as I tell you this.
I’m not cool.
I keep the real me tucked beneath a wig,
I’m a small American frog.
I grow beautiful as the theatre dims.