March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Esmé Weijun Wang, Nonfiction By Esmé Weijun Wang Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of The Border of Paradise and the forthcoming essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf Press, 2019), which “undertakes an investigation into life with schizoaffective disorder and chronic illness with narrative drive and prose of confiding grace.” One of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, she has written for The Believer, Lenny Letter, Salon, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco. * An excerpt from The Collected Schizophrenias: The debate over AB 1421 touched upon crucial issues of autonomy and civil liberties. The bill makes the crucial assumption that a person who displays a certain level of mental disorder is no longer capable of choosing treatment, including medication, and therefore must be forced into doing so. Sartre claimed, “We are our choices,” but what has a person become when it’s assumed that said person is innately incapable of choice? # “If only I could have gotten my shit together, everybody else’s lives would have been fine, was the message that I was getting constantly, and so I was responsible for other people’s happiness.” Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Brontez Purnell, Fiction By Brontez Purnell Brontez Purnell, whose “explorations of blackness, queerness, maleness, and Southernness take sharp, confident turns between raunch and rhapsody,” has been publishing, performing, and curating in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than ten years. He is the author of the cult zine Fag School, frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, and the founder and choreographer of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. He is the author of The Cruising Diaries, Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger, and Since I Laid My Burden Down. * An excerpt from Since I Laid My Burden Down: Before DeShawn left for Alabama and before his uncle’s death, others had gone. For instance, Arnold was dead. Dead, dead, dead as Latin. He sank with the Titanic. He flew the coop. That monkey had gone to heaven. It seemed that all the wild men around him were dying faster than he could keep track. Arnold was not the first, but he was of note. DeShawn received the message on the morning train, on the way to classes in Oakland, and he hopped on the next train back to nowhere. There was nowhere to mourn the dead boy. Arnold had not lived in any one place for long, and had pulled so much shit that no one really loved him that much anymore. Or maybe they were waiting to love him again after he climbed out of the hole he had dug himself. Like he would appear out of thin air, a magician’s assistant with a tiara and a sash that said “Healed” or something. The dead boy died before completing that magic trick. He would be that type of memory: one to forget. Three days of crying ensued and then a phone call. Arnold’s final roommate called DeShawn and asked very sweetly if he would clean the dead boy’s room. DeShawn said yes. Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Tommy Pico, Poetry By Tommy Pico Tommy Pico, who “writes poetry of rare brilliance, assured in form and forceful in its interrogation of myth and cultural expectations and self,” is the author of IRL, Nature Poem, and Junk, which will be published by Tin House Books in May. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn, where he cocurates the reading series Poets with Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker, cohosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. * An excerpt from Nature Poem: Onstage I’m a mess of tremor and sweat I must have some face-blindness? bc I can’t tell the difference btwn the faces of attention and danger The gift of panic is clarity—repeat the known quantities: Today is Wednesday. Wednesday is a turkey burger. My throat is full of survivors. Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Antoinette Nwandu, Drama By Antoinette Nwandu Antoinette Nwandu, whose “blistering interrogations of race, power, and violence range from symbolic to highly naturalistic works,” is a playwright based in New York. In June last year, Steppenwolf presented the world premiere of her play Pass Over, a mashup of the book of Exodus and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that sparked a national conversation about bias in the theater community. Her play Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate premiered at Victory Gardens Theater in February this year. * An excerpt from Pass Over: NOTE: This play should NOT have an intermission. If Moses and Kitch cannot leave, neither can you. MOSES man what’chu fixta do today man damn KITCH man i’on know man what’chu fixta do Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Rickey Laurentiis, Poetry By Rickey Laurentiis Rickey Laurentiis, 2017. Rickey Laurentiis, whose poems “trace the complex relationships among power, freedom, and violence with both sinuous lyricism and urgent declamation,” was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the author of Boy with Thorn, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Levis Reading Prize. His work has appeared in The New Republic, the New York Times, Poetry, and many other places. * “Boy with Thorn” Unknown, first century BC, bronze 1. Entered, those shadows spoke his loneliness like a god. 2. This was new knowledge. The kind he had little business knowing. The mere risk of it making it all the more delicious. Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Hansol Jung, Drama By Hansol Jung Photo by Tess Mayer. Hansol Jung, whose plays “knit together the agonies of Korean history, the restless excitement and anxiety of the tech age, and the shapes of loss and longing,” is a playwright and director from South Korea. Jung’s productions include Cardboard Piano, Among the Dead, No More Sad Things, Wolf Play, and Wild Goose Dreams. Jung holds an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale School of Drama and is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Theatre Writers Lab. * An excerpt from Wild Goose Dreams: HEEJIN Message from Heejin Cook WTF OMG dad untag me from that pic WTHIWWY?!?!? MINSUNG Hi! HEEJIN Delete! Plz! Idk wot u doin Imma unfriend u if u do shit lyk dis 2 me MINSUNG Huh? Read More