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.
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.
Book Mansion was overwhelming. China’s largest bookstore occupied 172,000 square feet and carried 230,000 titles. Bestsellers included Chinese titles such as I Was an American Police Officer; I’m Only Raising You for 18 Years; Chinese-Style Divorce; and Harvard Girl, a memoir that revealed the parenting style that made her stand out from her Chinese classmates and gain acceptance to the school. That book was in its sixty-third printing.
Downstairs, Monica’s Story lay between Bill and Hillary Clinton’s autobiographies. A boxed set about Göring rubbed shoulders with What’s Behind Jewish Excellence? Translated American titles ranged from the predictable – The Da Vinci Code, The Atkins Diet—to the surprising—Henry Rollins’s Get in the Van, and a Woody Allen collection whose Chinese title promised MENSA Whores. An entire floor held English-learning materials. Love English taught pickup lines and pillow talk, including cultural hints such as “‘I’m bored’ really means ‘Do you want to have sex?’”
We at school knew Mr. and Mrs. Cuts come from a family that eats children. There is a red metal tree with plastic-wrapped toys in the window and a long candy counter case to lure you in. Mr. and Mrs. Cuts have no children of their own. They ate them during a hard winter and salted the rest down for sandwiches the colored boy runs out to the pulpwood crew at noon. I count colored children going in to buy some candy to see how many make it back out, but generally our mother is ready to go home before I can tell. Our credit at Cuts is short.
Everyone in anthro knows it, it’s an open secret, but coming home from the field is as tough as going out. Maybe even tougher. When you go out on the road, you’re you; and when you come back, you’re not you anymore, but they’re still them.
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.’
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.
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.
Book Mansion was overwhelming. China’s largest bookstore occupied 172,000 square feet and carried 230,000 titles. Bestsellers included Chinese titles such as I Was an American Police Officer; I’m Only Raising You for 18 Years; Chinese-Style Divorce; and Harvard Girl, a memoir that revealed the parenting style that made her stand out from her Chinese classmates and gain acceptance to the school. That book was in its sixty-third printing.
Downstairs, Monica’s Story lay between Bill and Hillary Clinton’s autobiographies. A boxed set about Göring rubbed shoulders with What’s Behind Jewish Excellence? Translated American titles ranged from the predictable – The Da Vinci Code, The Atkins Diet—to the surprising—Henry Rollins’s Get in the Van, and a Woody Allen collection whose Chinese title promised MENSA Whores. An entire floor held English-learning materials. Love English taught pickup lines and pillow talk, including cultural hints such as “‘I’m bored’ really means ‘Do you want to have sex?’”
We at school knew Mr. and Mrs. Cuts come from a family that eats children. There is a red metal tree with plastic-wrapped toys in the window and a long candy counter case to lure you in. Mr. and Mrs. Cuts have no children of their own. They ate them during a hard winter and salted the rest down for sandwiches the colored boy runs out to the pulpwood crew at noon. I count colored children going in to buy some candy to see how many make it back out, but generally our mother is ready to go home before I can tell. Our credit at Cuts is short.
Everyone in anthro knows it, it’s an open secret, but coming home from the field is as tough as going out. Maybe even tougher. When you go out on the road, you’re you; and when you come back, you’re not you anymore, but they’re still them.
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.’
CHOTON
I’m just saying like taxonomically, does it even make sense to categorize my genitalia and your genitalia as the same thing, like…
He indicates RAHEEM’s penis.
…if that’s a penis then…
He pulls his boxers down to show his own penis.
I mean what is this? It’s a polyp.
RAHEEM
Okay.
CHOTON
It’s a little nunu.
RAHEEM
Well I like your little nunu…
RAHEEM examines CHOTON’s penis. He pulls back his foreskin just a bit. CHOTON winces.
CHOTON
Ow. Careful.
RAHEEM
What?
CHOTON
No it’s— it’s just sensitive.