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 don't trust nobody
but the land I said
I don't mean
present company
of course
you understand the grasses
hear me too always
present the grasses
confident grasses polite
command to shhhhh
shhh listen
The intimate places of his father’s body were now within his reach, turned over to the touch of his fingers: his father who had never embraced him as a child. First he would touch his earlobes, to move them out of the way for the scissors, which had been taken out of the mother-of-pearl damascene box. Then he would take the nose between his thumb and forefinger, and give it a slight lift so as to shave above the upper lip. And the more the cancer gnawed away at the liver and the body grew limp, the more it opened to him, replete with its disappointments, sated with its tribulations. They would sit together in silence, the father and he, the youngest of his sons.
When I put in my notice at the bookstore, the manager—a heavy-set woman in her mid-forties who often spoke in monosyllabic bursts—curtly replied, “We’re sorry to see you go.” Whether my employer regretted her inability to create a work environment that might have fostered my personal growth and tempted me to reconsider my options was beyond the scope of my then-nascent narrative powers, but I did not elaborate, as I did not wish to draw out the details surrounding my sudden departure. Outwardly, I feigned regret, but inside, I rejoiced: I was free, I thought, free to take leave of my post and bid my old, monotonous life among books and bookish people goodbye! A more urgent position awaited me in the form of a transparent eye. I shook the manager’s hand, and before the day was done, I updated my email account preferences so that in one week’s time, any work-related queries would receive the following automated response:
HELLO: I AM CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. I’M CHASING A DREAM CALLED PROSE.
Two marriages:
Clara and Fritz Haber: Clara finishes a doctorate in chemistry. She is the only woman at her school. She is brilliant but reserved. The first time Fritz proposes, she declines. The second time, she agrees. After they marry, he demands that Clara be a housewife and a mother, while he travels for work. When war breaks out in 1918, he proves his patriotism through the development of a new weapon, something invisible to the human eye and absolutely silent. After finding out about the chlorine gas, Clara shoots herself in the family garden.
Marie and Pierre Curie: Pierre makes several marriage proposals to Marie before she accepts. A commonality then between these women. On her wedding day, she wears a dark blue dress. More practical, she thinks, and afterward, in her dress, goes back to the laboratory with Pierre. The lab is the basement of their home. In three years, they discover polonium and radium. In eight, they are awarded a Nobel. At first the committee will not recognize her (no woman has won before) but Pierre demands it—she is the one who sifted through ten tons of mineral-rich ore to find that tenth of a gram.
… I used to love it when it would rain in Los Angeles. I felt that the city was made suddenly reflective by the rain, that it was being coated in another, deeper layer of what it was by the falling moisture. It made me sad and that pleased me. It was a moment of relief from what I took to be the exhausting project of pretending to be happy all of the time.
I couldn’t move. The ground was tiny, an aerial map, rich in detail, and the wind tugged at my feet. What were the commands? Arch, I whispered. Arch arch arch. That was all I could remember. I stood up, gripping the side of the opening, my feet balanced on the metal bar beneath the doorway, resisting the steady rush of wind. The jumpmaster shouted again. I felt the pressure of his fingers. And then I was gone. I left the plane behind me and fell into the air.
I don't trust nobody
but the land I said
I don't mean
present company
of course
you understand the grasses
hear me too always
present the grasses
confident grasses polite
command to shhhhh
shhh listen
The intimate places of his father’s body were now within his reach, turned over to the touch of his fingers: his father who had never embraced him as a child. First he would touch his earlobes, to move them out of the way for the scissors, which had been taken out of the mother-of-pearl damascene box. Then he would take the nose between his thumb and forefinger, and give it a slight lift so as to shave above the upper lip. And the more the cancer gnawed away at the liver and the body grew limp, the more it opened to him, replete with its disappointments, sated with its tribulations. They would sit together in silence, the father and he, the youngest of his sons.
When I put in my notice at the bookstore, the manager—a heavy-set woman in her mid-forties who often spoke in monosyllabic bursts—curtly replied, “We’re sorry to see you go.” Whether my employer regretted her inability to create a work environment that might have fostered my personal growth and tempted me to reconsider my options was beyond the scope of my then-nascent narrative powers, but I did not elaborate, as I did not wish to draw out the details surrounding my sudden departure. Outwardly, I feigned regret, but inside, I rejoiced: I was free, I thought, free to take leave of my post and bid my old, monotonous life among books and bookish people goodbye! A more urgent position awaited me in the form of a transparent eye. I shook the manager’s hand, and before the day was done, I updated my email account preferences so that in one week’s time, any work-related queries would receive the following automated response:
HELLO: I AM CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. I’M CHASING A DREAM CALLED PROSE.
Two marriages:
Clara and Fritz Haber: Clara finishes a doctorate in chemistry. She is the only woman at her school. She is brilliant but reserved. The first time Fritz proposes, she declines. The second time, she agrees. After they marry, he demands that Clara be a housewife and a mother, while he travels for work. When war breaks out in 1918, he proves his patriotism through the development of a new weapon, something invisible to the human eye and absolutely silent. After finding out about the chlorine gas, Clara shoots herself in the family garden.
Marie and Pierre Curie: Pierre makes several marriage proposals to Marie before she accepts. A commonality then between these women. On her wedding day, she wears a dark blue dress. More practical, she thinks, and afterward, in her dress, goes back to the laboratory with Pierre. The lab is the basement of their home. In three years, they discover polonium and radium. In eight, they are awarded a Nobel. At first the committee will not recognize her (no woman has won before) but Pierre demands it—she is the one who sifted through ten tons of mineral-rich ore to find that tenth of a gram.
… I used to love it when it would rain in Los Angeles. I felt that the city was made suddenly reflective by the rain, that it was being coated in another, deeper layer of what it was by the falling moisture. It made me sad and that pleased me. It was a moment of relief from what I took to be the exhausting project of pretending to be happy all of the time.
I couldn’t move. The ground was tiny, an aerial map, rich in detail, and the wind tugged at my feet. What were the commands? Arch, I whispered. Arch arch arch. That was all I could remember. I stood up, gripping the side of the opening, my feet balanced on the metal bar beneath the doorway, resisting the steady rush of wind. The jumpmaster shouted again. I felt the pressure of his fingers. And then I was gone. I left the plane behind me and fell into the air.