Search all Winners

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
Negar Azimi	Nonfiction	2026
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

2010

A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living

A Novel

In 1959, Prentice Ross astounded his parents by enrolling in aviation school instead of going to Yale. Of course, being generous and humane people, Prentice’s parents didn’t have anything against pilots per se. It just happened that they had never met one, nor had they ever even thought of how a person became one. In fact, they knew not a single person who drove any machine at all (for a living, that is), so they were at a loss when they tried to imagine what their son’s future would be like.

Teddy Wayne

2011

Kapitoil

A Novel

The movie is entertaining and intriguing. At four points during it I rotate my eyes to observe Rebecca. The monitor is mirrored on her glasses and behind them her eyes are very wide. Although I am a more experienced programmer, I am certain her ideas on the movie are more complex than mine.

Liza Birkenmeier

2025

Grief Hotel

A Play

WINN – How’s Melba?

EM – She told me she could see the afterlife.

WINN – What’s it like?

EM – Or my afterlife. She said that I would be a few other things when I die, that my cells have tiny souls so when I am a piece of cheese and a pigeon, I will still be me, but my consciousness will be broken down into smaller bits.

WINN – Does that feel happy to you?

EM – I don’t care. I’ll be like a deconstructed sandwich. / Or baby.

Javier Zamora

2024

Unaccompanied: Poems

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.

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.

Sarah Ruhl

2003

The Clean House and Other Plays

LORENZO: Let me tell you a story, Tilly. A patient of mine – he thought if he urinated, he would flood his entire village. So he could not urinate! And this was very painful to him. So I tell him a little white lie, I say to him, “Sir, your whole village is on fire.” And suddenly he feels free to urinate. He feels, through this very ordinary physical activity, that he is saving his village again and again.

TILLY: Huh.

LORENZO: Are you afraid of putting out the fires?

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