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 Faith Healer of Olive Avenue
Stories

“He has something of mine,” the man said.

 

With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”

 

“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”

 

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”

 

“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”

 

Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved.  The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.

Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced
Poems

In his bath my son looks half-

drowned,

lying so still,

 

his hair a scarf of weed,

his eyes closed,

and only the water breathing.

 

He practices

in his porcelain bed

his resting,

 

rehearsing

until the water takes cold

and he shivers a little against it.

I'm Always So Serious: Poems

        The husband joins his wife near the olive
shaded lamp and quails


        as his raving lover seizes the neck of
the fixture. I shudder in the passenger seat of


        this city, far enough to not be heard but a light shines
bright and I am seen, sleuthing and serious. I know


        close violences still form in the absence of want.
I keep walking as the husband shuts the blinds.

Parasites Like Us
A Novel

The van’s front windows were slathered with blood, and inside, a whole brood of furry lapdogs were going wild. They leapt over the captain’s chair, running along the dash and gauges, and the dogs were soaked in blood, their fur syrup-streaked, their whiskers drooping with it. One lapdog was desperately pawing red streaks on the glass, so that the driver’s window was greasy with a thick, dirty paste.

Home Movie
A Novel

His hand had fallen as she moved. His expression was perplexed, one she’d seen a hundred times on teachers’ faces when they turned from the problem under study to that of the class’s persistent incomprehension. She turned away, to her flowers, and when she straightened, felt the shift in his gaze as if she’d been inside of it and now it were being withdrawn, unpinning her will, that went to him and away and stayed all at once. He said, “I’ve frightened you.”

The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue
Stories

“He has something of mine,” the man said.

 

With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”

 

“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”

 

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”

 

“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”

 

Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved.  The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.

Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced
Poems

In his bath my son looks half-

drowned,

lying so still,

 

his hair a scarf of weed,

his eyes closed,

and only the water breathing.

 

He practices

in his porcelain bed

his resting,

 

rehearsing

until the water takes cold

and he shivers a little against it.

I'm Always So Serious: Poems

        The husband joins his wife near the olive
shaded lamp and quails


        as his raving lover seizes the neck of
the fixture. I shudder in the passenger seat of


        this city, far enough to not be heard but a light shines
bright and I am seen, sleuthing and serious. I know


        close violences still form in the absence of want.
I keep walking as the husband shuts the blinds.

Parasites Like Us
A Novel

The van’s front windows were slathered with blood, and inside, a whole brood of furry lapdogs were going wild. They leapt over the captain’s chair, running along the dash and gauges, and the dogs were soaked in blood, their fur syrup-streaked, their whiskers drooping with it. One lapdog was desperately pawing red streaks on the glass, so that the driver’s window was greasy with a thick, dirty paste.

Home Movie
A Novel

His hand had fallen as she moved. His expression was perplexed, one she’d seen a hundred times on teachers’ faces when they turned from the problem under study to that of the class’s persistent incomprehension. She turned away, to her flowers, and when she straightened, felt the shift in his gaze as if she’d been inside of it and now it were being withdrawn, unpinning her will, that went to him and away and stayed all at once. He said, “I’ve frightened you.”