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.

The Ecstatic
A Novel

My sister was enrolled in a beauty pageant for virgins, a contest I thought she could win. She was cute enough, but also, how many teenage hymens were left in America anymore? Even the emu-faced girls had been initiated by twelve. Fewer contestants fueled better odds.

 

- You might actually win, I told Nabisase.

 

- I’m glad that this surprises you, she said.

We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone
Poems

Voluptuous, then merely sticky: to absorb him through my palms. We

were as Danes in Denmark, thus I thought bathwater and longingly,

thought how kneeling hurts the knees, then ghost-gravel. I was

Marriott-air-conditioned unto arctic, not remedied by his warmth

an inch east. I thought surely the ice must calve, then forthwith. Or

was it Ramada, Ramada. In those stories, men stitch coarse blankets

together and spoon, or Strauss-waltz on blinding ice. In those stories,

such measures save no one. What does: deep consummation; marrow

from a shinbone.

A Burning
A Novel

“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm. 

“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.” 

“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply. 

Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.

Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue. “What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says. 

We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.” 

Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.
 
“Go down,” she says. 

When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.” 

I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps.

Civil Service
Poems

In his office in the attic, in his favorite khaki pants,

the Archivist carefully sets down the glass case

of his body so as not to rattle the exhibit of his mind.

He wears gloves to stroke the name on the envelope,

the name written in a florid hand trained by long-ago

love. To live among the dead, the Archivist thinks.

His eyebrows do a little jig. With fingers strange

to his wife, the Archivist traces the name of the street

in the village that burned. The street wears the name of the flower

the Archivist’s mother tucked behind her ear in a photograph

languishing in a desk drawer. The Archivist carries his mind

into each house. Here, the Cook makes love, his hand

brushing flour against his boyfriend’s nipple. There,

the Tailor’s satisfied song of scissors bisecting

a ream of red. A girl whose mouth makes an O,

around which chocolate makes another mouth, runs

through the road. The road which runs through

the Archivist’s blood. The girl is the Archivist’s grandmother

only in that she is a story the Archivist tells

himself about how he got here. Under an oak tree,

two dogs fucking. The girl’s ice cream is melting.

The Archivist’s mind is sticky with history.

Of course, the village burns again. History is

the only road that survives. Downstairs, the Archivist’s daughter

is hungry. He restores the dead to their folders. To live!

The girls’ wails rise through the house like smoke.

The World's Room
Poems

Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:

Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.

 

Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.

Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.

 

Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.

The target is yourself becoming brave.

 

Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –

Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.

Low Life
Lures and Snares of Old New York

Rat-baiting was the premier betting sport of the nineteenth century. Its prestige can be gauged in economic terms, circa 1875: admission to a then illegal prizefight between humans cost fifty cents, to dogfights and cockfights $2, while a fight pitting a dog against rats ran anywhere from $1.50 if the dog faced five rats or fewer, up to $5, in proportion to the number of rats. In the eighteenth century the biggest draw had been bearbaiting, but that sport gradually dissipated as the number of available bears decreased, although matches continued to be held up to the Civil War, notably in McLaughlin’s bear pit at First Avenue and Tenth Street. For a while, dog-vs.-raccoon contests were popular, but rats were so readily available that they came to dominate the scene; boys were paid to catch them, at a rate of five to twelve cents a head.

The Ecstatic
A Novel

My sister was enrolled in a beauty pageant for virgins, a contest I thought she could win. She was cute enough, but also, how many teenage hymens were left in America anymore? Even the emu-faced girls had been initiated by twelve. Fewer contestants fueled better odds.

 

- You might actually win, I told Nabisase.

 

- I’m glad that this surprises you, she said.

We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone
Poems

Voluptuous, then merely sticky: to absorb him through my palms. We

were as Danes in Denmark, thus I thought bathwater and longingly,

thought how kneeling hurts the knees, then ghost-gravel. I was

Marriott-air-conditioned unto arctic, not remedied by his warmth

an inch east. I thought surely the ice must calve, then forthwith. Or

was it Ramada, Ramada. In those stories, men stitch coarse blankets

together and spoon, or Strauss-waltz on blinding ice. In those stories,

such measures save no one. What does: deep consummation; marrow

from a shinbone.

A Burning
A Novel

“YOU COME WITH ME NOW,” Uma madam says one day, after breakfast. She has come prepared. A male guard comes forward and grabs my arm. 

“Where?” I say, wrenching free. He lets go. “Stop it! I need to talk to Gobind about the appeals.” 

“You walk or he will drag you,” says Uma madam in reply. 

Back in my cell, I gather my sleeping mat, my other salwar kameez, slip my feet into the rubber slippers, then look around for anything else that is mine. Nothing is.

Uma madam pulls my dupatta off my neck. When I grab at it, she clicks her tongue. “What use is modesty for you anymore?” she says. 

We walk down the corridor, the three of us, and a few women look up from inside their cells. The corridor is so dim they are no more than movement, shapes, smells, a belch. Perhaps sensing my fear, Uma madam finds it in her heart to explain. “You can’t have a dupatta in this place where you are going. Not allowed. What if you decide to hang yourself, what then? It has happened before.” After a pause, she says, “Nobody’s coming to see you, don’t worry about looking nice.” 

Uma madam unlocks a door at the far end of the corridor, which opens onto a staircase I have never seen. Though the day is dry and sunny, there is a puddle of water on the top step.
 
“Go down,” she says. 

When I don’t move, she insists, “Go! Don’t look so afraid, we don’t keep tigers down there.” 

I climb down, my slippers slapping the steps.

Civil Service
Poems

In his office in the attic, in his favorite khaki pants,

the Archivist carefully sets down the glass case

of his body so as not to rattle the exhibit of his mind.

He wears gloves to stroke the name on the envelope,

the name written in a florid hand trained by long-ago

love. To live among the dead, the Archivist thinks.

His eyebrows do a little jig. With fingers strange

to his wife, the Archivist traces the name of the street

in the village that burned. The street wears the name of the flower

the Archivist’s mother tucked behind her ear in a photograph

languishing in a desk drawer. The Archivist carries his mind

into each house. Here, the Cook makes love, his hand

brushing flour against his boyfriend’s nipple. There,

the Tailor’s satisfied song of scissors bisecting

a ream of red. A girl whose mouth makes an O,

around which chocolate makes another mouth, runs

through the road. The road which runs through

the Archivist’s blood. The girl is the Archivist’s grandmother

only in that she is a story the Archivist tells

himself about how he got here. Under an oak tree,

two dogs fucking. The girl’s ice cream is melting.

The Archivist’s mind is sticky with history.

Of course, the village burns again. History is

the only road that survives. Downstairs, the Archivist’s daughter

is hungry. He restores the dead to their folders. To live!

The girls’ wails rise through the house like smoke.

The World's Room
Poems

Boy now, man later; and all the story in between:

Yes breaking down to No, joy to pain.

 

Milk now, meat later; separation, fuse.

Swim the river rising and with patience take your aim.

 

Miss once, miss again; and your whole life seems a waste.

The target is yourself becoming brave.

 

Who soon, who later? – whatever happens next –

Someday you’ll lose us in the in-between.

Low Life
Lures and Snares of Old New York

Rat-baiting was the premier betting sport of the nineteenth century. Its prestige can be gauged in economic terms, circa 1875: admission to a then illegal prizefight between humans cost fifty cents, to dogfights and cockfights $2, while a fight pitting a dog against rats ran anywhere from $1.50 if the dog faced five rats or fewer, up to $5, in proportion to the number of rats. In the eighteenth century the biggest draw had been bearbaiting, but that sport gradually dissipated as the number of available bears decreased, although matches continued to be held up to the Civil War, notably in McLaughlin’s bear pit at First Avenue and Tenth Street. For a while, dog-vs.-raccoon contests were popular, but rats were so readily available that they came to dominate the scene; boys were paid to catch them, at a rate of five to twelve cents a head.