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.
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?’”
Mamá, you left me. Papá, you left me.
Abuelos, I left you. Tías, I left you.
Cousins, I’m here. Cousins, I left you.
Tías, welcome. Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.
Mamá, let’s return. Papá ¿por qué?
Mamá, marry for papers. Papá, marry for papers.
Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.
I won’t marry for papers. I might marry for papers.
I won’t be back soon. I can’t vote anywhere,
I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.
After a sleepless sexless night, Henrik asked Lucretia over muesli where the nearest pharmacy was. She made her worst face and asked why. He said he needed prescriptions filled—at this, she became a flurry of snorts and book recommendations, declaring that Western medical institutions profited by aggravating illness; Big Pharma was a cartel, doctors were pushers, patients were junkies. She asked to see what he was taking, and when she laid eyes on his briefcase-size pill case, she looked like he’d just told her he was born without a heart. She made him lie down, and sent up gasps researching his prescriptions on her naturopathic reference sites. He wasn’t disordered, she assured him; society was. Manic conservatives, depressive liberals. Mood-swinging markets and a demented climate. Rich against poor, white against unwhite. Henrik was just American.
With careless hands a child kills an ant. Flies are far trickier, though once caught, they have little chance. And, if darting birds don’t grab them first, butterflies die natural deaths; few people—collectors excepted—willfully still such tremulous beauty.
Notes from Kabul
on being fine when others aren’t;
notice graphic, how quotes
wax truth & assassinate
anecdotes
the surplus of survival
guilt covers pages & the data
at the price of two
boiled eggs
rectangular streets grind us
like watercolor powder
we wash blood off bags
& hats & the few
branches of tree
are in blaze yet we
still play stone scissor
paper
Annalee is sorting through a box of seed packets. She has a swollen lip; her boyfriend punched her this morning because she had run out of bacon. She walks over to Wynn’s truck and inspects her lips in the sideview mirror. “It’s really strange to have somebody hit you,” she says. “When I was in high school, a boy hit me once and I remember thinking, If he hits me again I’m going to kill him. Then he hit me again and I didn’t do anything.”
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?’”
Mamá, you left me. Papá, you left me.
Abuelos, I left you. Tías, I left you.
Cousins, I’m here. Cousins, I left you.
Tías, welcome. Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.
Mamá, let’s return. Papá ¿por qué?
Mamá, marry for papers. Papá, marry for papers.
Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.
I won’t marry for papers. I might marry for papers.
I won’t be back soon. I can’t vote anywhere,
I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.
After a sleepless sexless night, Henrik asked Lucretia over muesli where the nearest pharmacy was. She made her worst face and asked why. He said he needed prescriptions filled—at this, she became a flurry of snorts and book recommendations, declaring that Western medical institutions profited by aggravating illness; Big Pharma was a cartel, doctors were pushers, patients were junkies. She asked to see what he was taking, and when she laid eyes on his briefcase-size pill case, she looked like he’d just told her he was born without a heart. She made him lie down, and sent up gasps researching his prescriptions on her naturopathic reference sites. He wasn’t disordered, she assured him; society was. Manic conservatives, depressive liberals. Mood-swinging markets and a demented climate. Rich against poor, white against unwhite. Henrik was just American.
With careless hands a child kills an ant. Flies are far trickier, though once caught, they have little chance. And, if darting birds don’t grab them first, butterflies die natural deaths; few people—collectors excepted—willfully still such tremulous beauty.
Notes from Kabul
on being fine when others aren’t;
notice graphic, how quotes
wax truth & assassinate
anecdotes
the surplus of survival
guilt covers pages & the data
at the price of two
boiled eggs
rectangular streets grind us
like watercolor powder
we wash blood off bags
& hats & the few
branches of tree
are in blaze yet we
still play stone scissor
paper
Annalee is sorting through a box of seed packets. She has a swollen lip; her boyfriend punched her this morning because she had run out of bacon. She walks over to Wynn’s truck and inspects her lips in the sideview mirror. “It’s really strange to have somebody hit you,” she says. “When I was in high school, a boy hit me once and I remember thinking, If he hits me again I’m going to kill him. Then he hit me again and I didn’t do anything.”