Search all Winners

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Name Sort descending	Genre	Year
Raymond Abbott	Fiction	1985
Aria Aber	Poetry	2020
André Aciman	Nonfiction	1995
David Adjmi	Drama	2010
Ellen Akins	Fiction	1989
Daniel Alarcón	Fiction	2004
Jeffery Renard Allen	Fiction	2002
Jeffery Renard Allen	Poetry	2002
Mindy Aloff	Nonfiction	1987
Diannely Antigua	Poetry	2020
Will Arbery	Drama	2020
Elizabeth Arnold	Poetry	2002
John Ash	Poetry	1986
Kirsten Bakis	Fiction	2004
Catherine Barnett	Poetry	2004
Clare Barron	Drama	2017
Elif Batuman	Nonfiction	2010
Jen Beagin	Fiction	2017
Jo Ann Beard	Nonfiction	1997
Joshua Bennett	Poetry	2021
Mischa Berlinski	Fiction	2008
Ciaran Berry	Poetry	2012
Aaliyah Bilal	Fiction	2024
Liza Birkenmeier	Drama	2025
Sherwin Bitsui	Poetry	2006
Scott Blackwood	Fiction	2011
Brian Blanchfield	Nonfiction	2016
Tommye Blount	Poetry	2023
Judy Blunt	Nonfiction	2001
Anne Boyer	Poetry	2018
Claire Boyles	Fiction	2022
Courtney A. Brkic	Fiction	2003
Joel Brouwer	Poetry	2001
Jericho Brown	Poetry	2009
Rita Bullwinkel	Fiction	2022

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Selected winners

Mindy Aloff

1987

Hippo in a Tutu

Dancing in Disney Animation

Even in a traditional "princess" picture, such as the still-popular 1950 Cinderella, the scene with the most romantic magic—the Fred-and-Ginger buoyancy and sense of brimming anticipation—is not, as we would expect, Cinderella's waltz with the Prince in the ballroom. That we only get to glimpse from behind the courtiers watching it—during those moments when the dance isn't interrupted by comic business for secondary characters or by the couple themselves breaking off the dance merely to drink in each other's shadows. The accent is on their private discovery of their feelings, not on the public celebration of their newfound romance. The real dance energy, rather, surges forth in the designing, cutting, and assembly of the heroine's dress in her lonely bedroom by an exaltation of singing mice and birds: a solitary girl's fantasy. The Disney inspirational artist for Cinderella, as for many animated features of the 1950s, was the brilliant and thoughtful painter Mary Blair. Although Blair was frequently heartbroken by what she viewed as the mistranslation of her concepts in the finished films—a feeling that seems to be embodied in the moment when Cinderella's wicked stepmother and stepsisters tear her dress to shreds—throughout the picture you can still see evidence of Blair's deeply unconventional ideas of how stories can be told through synecdoche (key details made to stand for a larger whole) and emotions represented through color and shifts in proportion.

Sigrid Nunez

1993

A Feather on the Breath of God

A Novel

He could be cruel. I once saw him blow pepper in the cat’s face. He loathed that cat, a surly, untrainable tom found in the street. But he was fond of another creature we took in, an orphaned nestling sparrow. Against expectations, the bird survived and learned to fly. But, afraid that it would not know how to fend for itself outdoors, we decided to keep it. My father sometimes sat by its cage, watching the bird and cooing to it in Chinese. My mother was amused. “You see: He has more to say to that bird than to us!” The emperor and his nightingale, she called them. “The Chinese have always loved their birds.” (What none of us knew: At that very moment in China keeping pet birds had been prohibited as a bourgeois affectation, and sparrows were being exterminated as pests.)

Stephen Wright

1990

M31

A Family Romance

“There is an ocean of dreams,” Maryse was explaining, “that our sleeping heads dip back into late at night. The tides go in and out, cleansing the shore. Who we are is whatever silhouettes against that great sea. It is deep and vast and strong, and even in the clearest moment of the brightest day something is leaking in, a permanent trickle in the plumbing. Sometimes, in some of us, things collapse, but now the moment is approaching when the wave will break to carry us all away. This will happen. Consider the signs. Learn how to float.”

“But what’s all this got to do with UFOs?” asked Beale.

“They’re the openings the dreams come through.”

Esmé Weijun Wang

2018

The Collected Schizophrenias

You are told when to sleep and when to wake up. If you spend too much time in your bedroom, it indicates that you’re being antisocial; if you do sit in the common areas, but don’t interact with the other patients, you’re probably depressed or overly inward or perhaps even catatonic. Humans might all be ciphers to one another, but people with mental illness are particularly opaque because of our broken brains; we cannot be trusted about anything, including our own experiences.