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.

We Are Taking Only What We Need
Stories

Daddy shook the box, kicked it, mumbled under his breath something that sounded like it had teeth. He came from around the house with a shovel and dragged it behind him, along with the box, to the woods. He would bury my dog, I thought.

The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue
Stories

“He has something of mine,” the man said.

 

With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”

 

“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”

 

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”

 

“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”

 

Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved.  The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.

Song
Poems

                My mother

gathers gladiolas. The gladness

is fractured. As when

the globe with its thousand mirrors

cracked the light. How

it hoarded sight: all the stolen perspectives

and the show of light

they shot around us: so that

down the dark hall the ghosts danced

with us: down the dark hall

the broken angels.

Ten Seconds
A Novel

“Malcolm is dead,” Eddie kept hearing as he raced to the shop. As he got closer, he saw the flashing lights, and the siren that had been only an eerie, barely audible musical accompaniment to his thoughts began to register as belonging to an ambulance and not as being a regular plant alarm. He knew that he would not cry no matter how awful it was; he never cried. That was one thing he never had to worry about. If one of them had to be killed here, it was better that it was Malcolm—because if Eddie had been killed, Malcolm would have cried like a baby.

In the Belly
Poems

There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –

a field of starfish, turning slowly

like cogs inside

a water-watch, wound by a sea river;

the star’s five fingers tremble and

reach for a clam’s book of meat,

into which it will inject a sedative

and then its stomach.

 

In The City, escaped parrots colonize

a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that

In a bag? More hits after this…

The Here and Now
A Novel

“You see, Schmuel,” Aaron resumed, in the tone a very wise man might employ with a very simple child, “the fact is, women’s voices are arousing to men. Don’t you find this to be so?”

 

“Sure, the good ones. Is that wrong?”

 

“And when you’re aroused,” he went on, “what happens to your concentration? Out the window. This also is why we separate the genders in shul. Also why our women cover their hair, knees, and shoulders. Why they wear thick stockings, not thin ones. When we pray, we want to immerse ourselves in prayer, not distract ourselves with sex.”

 

I spoke up then for distracted people everywhere. “What’s so bad about sex?”

We Are Taking Only What We Need
Stories

Daddy shook the box, kicked it, mumbled under his breath something that sounded like it had teeth. He came from around the house with a shovel and dragged it behind him, along with the box, to the woods. He would bury my dog, I thought.

The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue
Stories

“He has something of mine,” the man said.

 

With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”

 

“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”

 

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”

 

“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”

 

Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved.  The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.

Song
Poems

                My mother

gathers gladiolas. The gladness

is fractured. As when

the globe with its thousand mirrors

cracked the light. How

it hoarded sight: all the stolen perspectives

and the show of light

they shot around us: so that

down the dark hall the ghosts danced

with us: down the dark hall

the broken angels.

Ten Seconds
A Novel

“Malcolm is dead,” Eddie kept hearing as he raced to the shop. As he got closer, he saw the flashing lights, and the siren that had been only an eerie, barely audible musical accompaniment to his thoughts began to register as belonging to an ambulance and not as being a regular plant alarm. He knew that he would not cry no matter how awful it was; he never cried. That was one thing he never had to worry about. If one of them had to be killed here, it was better that it was Malcolm—because if Eddie had been killed, Malcolm would have cried like a baby.

In the Belly
Poems

There’s a kind of sky below the ocean –

a field of starfish, turning slowly

like cogs inside

a water-watch, wound by a sea river;

the star’s five fingers tremble and

reach for a clam’s book of meat,

into which it will inject a sedative

and then its stomach.

 

In The City, escaped parrots colonize

a hilltop and breed, cackling You want that

In a bag? More hits after this…

The Here and Now
A Novel

“You see, Schmuel,” Aaron resumed, in the tone a very wise man might employ with a very simple child, “the fact is, women’s voices are arousing to men. Don’t you find this to be so?”

 

“Sure, the good ones. Is that wrong?”

 

“And when you’re aroused,” he went on, “what happens to your concentration? Out the window. This also is why we separate the genders in shul. Also why our women cover their hair, knees, and shoulders. Why they wear thick stockings, not thin ones. When we pray, we want to immerse ourselves in prayer, not distract ourselves with sex.”

 

I spoke up then for distracted people everywhere. “What’s so bad about sex?”