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.
What could put an end to the worst of the internet? Social and economic collapse would do it, or perhaps a series of antitrust cases followed by a package of hard regulatory legislation that would somehow also dismantle the internet’s fundamental profit model. At this point it’s clear that collapse will almost definitely come first. Barring that, we’ve got nothing except our small attempts to retain our humanity.
no one wants to admit it but you just
might end up one day in the wrong
place at the wrong time and some
evil shit rains down on you
and maybe you get
crippled or blind
or plain old
dead and
not one soul will give a good goddamn
because they can soothe them-
selves with a wrung out prayer
about wrong places and
wrong times, when
even as they’re
thinking that
they know
that everywhere is the wrong place
and every hour is the wrong hour
and that bad breaks don’t seek
you out; they’re always there
waiting to swing into action
like a traitor limb you
didn’t even know
you had
The street deserted. Nobody,
only you and one last
dirt colored robin,
fastened to its branch
against the wind. It seems
you have arrived
late, the city unfamiliar,
the address lost.
And you made such a serious effort –
pondered the obstacles deeply,
tried to be your own critic.
Yet no one came to listen.
Maybe they came, and then left.
After you traveled so far,
just to be there.
It was a failure, that is what they will say.
NAT TURNER
What do you mean by your copyright?
The right to copy?
THOMAS R. GRAY
Yes, well, the right to publish and distribute, which involves copying necessarily.
NAT
And who can grant such a right?
THOMAS
The copyright office, naturally.
NAT
...
THOMAS
It protects the rights of the man who has done the work.
NAT
And is God not a sufficient witness of our works?
THOMAS
Uh,
No.
For me, to be a feminist is to answer the question “Are women human?” with a yes. It is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it’s certainly not about trading personal liberty – abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression—for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It’s about justice, fairness and access to the broad range of human experience. It’s about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, “the family,” men.
I pictured in my mind the house at the bottom of the hill, a dark house I had not set foot inside for many years, a house as large and spacious as a medieval fortress, with enough square footage for at least one or two more Catholic families. It was not a cheaply built house, as my adoptive father liked to say. It did not come cheaply built. My parents are somewhat rich, but, like most Midwesterners, they are the cheapest people I have ever known. Despite their lack of financial stress, they are extravagant in their cheapness, their discount-hunting, their coupon-scissoring, their manuals on how to save. It was important, they said, to think about the catastrophic future, to always have a backup account filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars. To think about it too much depressed me. My entire existence was infected by this cheapness, this so-called frugality. Of course, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that these values of cheapness or frugality were what allowed once-orphans like myself and my now-dead adoptive brother to grow up, and to thrive even, in the comfort and security of the not cheaply built house. But there would be no more thriving for us, as one of us was dead.
What could put an end to the worst of the internet? Social and economic collapse would do it, or perhaps a series of antitrust cases followed by a package of hard regulatory legislation that would somehow also dismantle the internet’s fundamental profit model. At this point it’s clear that collapse will almost definitely come first. Barring that, we’ve got nothing except our small attempts to retain our humanity.
no one wants to admit it but you just
might end up one day in the wrong
place at the wrong time and some
evil shit rains down on you
and maybe you get
crippled or blind
or plain old
dead and
not one soul will give a good goddamn
because they can soothe them-
selves with a wrung out prayer
about wrong places and
wrong times, when
even as they’re
thinking that
they know
that everywhere is the wrong place
and every hour is the wrong hour
and that bad breaks don’t seek
you out; they’re always there
waiting to swing into action
like a traitor limb you
didn’t even know
you had
The street deserted. Nobody,
only you and one last
dirt colored robin,
fastened to its branch
against the wind. It seems
you have arrived
late, the city unfamiliar,
the address lost.
And you made such a serious effort –
pondered the obstacles deeply,
tried to be your own critic.
Yet no one came to listen.
Maybe they came, and then left.
After you traveled so far,
just to be there.
It was a failure, that is what they will say.
NAT TURNER
What do you mean by your copyright?
The right to copy?
THOMAS R. GRAY
Yes, well, the right to publish and distribute, which involves copying necessarily.
NAT
And who can grant such a right?
THOMAS
The copyright office, naturally.
NAT
...
THOMAS
It protects the rights of the man who has done the work.
NAT
And is God not a sufficient witness of our works?
THOMAS
Uh,
No.
For me, to be a feminist is to answer the question “Are women human?” with a yes. It is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it’s certainly not about trading personal liberty – abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression—for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It’s about justice, fairness and access to the broad range of human experience. It’s about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, “the family,” men.
I pictured in my mind the house at the bottom of the hill, a dark house I had not set foot inside for many years, a house as large and spacious as a medieval fortress, with enough square footage for at least one or two more Catholic families. It was not a cheaply built house, as my adoptive father liked to say. It did not come cheaply built. My parents are somewhat rich, but, like most Midwesterners, they are the cheapest people I have ever known. Despite their lack of financial stress, they are extravagant in their cheapness, their discount-hunting, their coupon-scissoring, their manuals on how to save. It was important, they said, to think about the catastrophic future, to always have a backup account filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars. To think about it too much depressed me. My entire existence was infected by this cheapness, this so-called frugality. Of course, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that these values of cheapness or frugality were what allowed once-orphans like myself and my now-dead adoptive brother to grow up, and to thrive even, in the comfort and security of the not cheaply built house. But there would be no more thriving for us, as one of us was dead.