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.
I draw the curtains. The room darkens, but
the mirror still reflects a crescent moon.
I pull the crescent out, a rigid curve
that softens into a length of cloth.
I wrap the cloth around my eyes,
and I’m peering through a crack in the wall
revealing a landscape of snow.
There are no personal phone calls allowed. We do, however, allow for emergencies. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first. If you can’t find your supervisor, ask Phillip Spiers, who sits over there. He’ll check with Clarissa Nicks, who sits over there. If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go.
The precision of the map allowed Maria to read the planet’s history like a type of braille. As hinted by the initial data, the northern hemisphere proved to be the smoothest surface that had ever been observed in the solar system. Most of the terrain seemed to tilt slightly to the north, suggesting that a planetwide drainage system may have once emptied there, into a great northern ocean. Inscribed onto the surface was even a possible shoreline, Deuteronilus, which could be traced for thousands of kilometers. The coast ran along nearly the same elevation, with variations that could be explained by the ground rebounding, exhaling as the weight of a sea of long-gone water evaporated. With each new detail Maria plotted, another aspect of Mars’s history came to life.
Mars Global Surveyor changed what it meant to see a planet. If the old map of Mars was a simple picture, the new map was a portrait. It went beyond what our eyes could take in, capturing data on contours, on composition, on forces we could not see—not just topography but things like magnetic signals and mineral compositions measured out beyond the visible wavelengths. There were subtleties to be seen—we just had to get there, and when we got there, we had to know how to look.
Excerpt(s) from The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World by Sarah Stewart Johnson, copyright © 2020 by Sarah Stewart Johnson. Used by permission of Crown Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.
Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.
He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?
Spring of 1954, my mother stood at the threshold of Henry Picotte’s abandoned chicken house, a bouquet of hens dangling in either hand, and eyed the enormous prairie rattler coiled on the dirt floor. Killing the snake would be inconvenient, hampered as she was by a midterm pregnancy and the hysterical chickens swooping left and right around their new hoe, but a weapon would not have been hard to find. Stout diamond willow sticks leaned against every gatepost on the place, anywhere a man might step off a horse. Such readiness suggested an extended family of snakes, more than she wished to dwell on with her hands full of squawking chickens. Stepping back out, she hollered for my father to bring a spade.
The last visitor left.
You closed the door and smiled at me.
I watched you cross Room 515 through
the flowers in vases, and your face
looked just like your face, smiling
down at me in my stupid green issue gown.
I felt myself want you
through the plastic tubes,
the vines around, across and above me.
I felt myself want you
exclusively. Even pain faded
into the scenery as you leaned in
to kiss me. And I met your kiss
with my lips and we were both
folded into it,
into that clean clean folding,
that soft longed-for kiss
across the side rails. That particular kiss
in its delicious oblivion hoisted us
above the suffering body.
We felt that long transfer of soft
for softness, that kiss lifting us
above the basement drawers
where we would finally face up.
I draw the curtains. The room darkens, but
the mirror still reflects a crescent moon.
I pull the crescent out, a rigid curve
that softens into a length of cloth.
I wrap the cloth around my eyes,
and I’m peering through a crack in the wall
revealing a landscape of snow.
There are no personal phone calls allowed. We do, however, allow for emergencies. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first. If you can’t find your supervisor, ask Phillip Spiers, who sits over there. He’ll check with Clarissa Nicks, who sits over there. If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go.
The precision of the map allowed Maria to read the planet’s history like a type of braille. As hinted by the initial data, the northern hemisphere proved to be the smoothest surface that had ever been observed in the solar system. Most of the terrain seemed to tilt slightly to the north, suggesting that a planetwide drainage system may have once emptied there, into a great northern ocean. Inscribed onto the surface was even a possible shoreline, Deuteronilus, which could be traced for thousands of kilometers. The coast ran along nearly the same elevation, with variations that could be explained by the ground rebounding, exhaling as the weight of a sea of long-gone water evaporated. With each new detail Maria plotted, another aspect of Mars’s history came to life.
Mars Global Surveyor changed what it meant to see a planet. If the old map of Mars was a simple picture, the new map was a portrait. It went beyond what our eyes could take in, capturing data on contours, on composition, on forces we could not see—not just topography but things like magnetic signals and mineral compositions measured out beyond the visible wavelengths. There were subtleties to be seen—we just had to get there, and when we got there, we had to know how to look.
Excerpt(s) from The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World by Sarah Stewart Johnson, copyright © 2020 by Sarah Stewart Johnson. Used by permission of Crown Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Able God walked in slowly, dazed, then he stepped outside and turned to look at his neighbors, who were sitting in the narrow alley. He scanned their faces for answers, but they turned away, shifted on their low stools, and one after another, went into their rooms.
Inside, Able God paced the house, frustration coiling around his head. Had he had any doubt that the police were aware of his involvement, what he saw erased it. He looked out through the louvered window. He blundered his way manically through the chaos, tossing things aside. He pulled up the mattress, rifled through his clothes, heaped one on the other.
He noticed they had not taken his hidden wrap of marijuana, but his chess pieces were spilled all over the ground. He tried to gather them into a plastic bag, but his whole body trembled now, his eyes smarting with tears. The chess set was not meant to be scattered; the pieces were meant to be neatly arranged. How had the police known where he lived? Maybe Akudo had been arrested, but if so, why was the madam protecting her whereabouts?
Spring of 1954, my mother stood at the threshold of Henry Picotte’s abandoned chicken house, a bouquet of hens dangling in either hand, and eyed the enormous prairie rattler coiled on the dirt floor. Killing the snake would be inconvenient, hampered as she was by a midterm pregnancy and the hysterical chickens swooping left and right around their new hoe, but a weapon would not have been hard to find. Stout diamond willow sticks leaned against every gatepost on the place, anywhere a man might step off a horse. Such readiness suggested an extended family of snakes, more than she wished to dwell on with her hands full of squawking chickens. Stepping back out, she hollered for my father to bring a spade.
The last visitor left.
You closed the door and smiled at me.
I watched you cross Room 515 through
the flowers in vases, and your face
looked just like your face, smiling
down at me in my stupid green issue gown.
I felt myself want you
through the plastic tubes,
the vines around, across and above me.
I felt myself want you
exclusively. Even pain faded
into the scenery as you leaned in
to kiss me. And I met your kiss
with my lips and we were both
folded into it,
into that clean clean folding,
that soft longed-for kiss
across the side rails. That particular kiss
in its delicious oblivion hoisted us
above the suffering body.
We felt that long transfer of soft
for softness, that kiss lifting us
above the basement drawers
where we would finally face up.