March 22, 2017 Whiting Awards 2017 Jen Beagin, Fiction By Whiting Honorees Jean Beagin. Photo by Laura Dombrowski. Jen Beagin holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine and has published stories in Juked and Faultline, among other journals and literary magazines. Her novel, Pretend I’m Dead, was published by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press in 2015. She lives in Hudson, New York. Read More
March 22, 2017 Whiting Awards 2017 Clare Barron, Drama By Whiting Honorees Photo: R. J. Tolan Clare Barron is a playwright and actor from Wenatchee, Washington. Her plays have been produced by Page 73, Woolly Mammoth, Clubbed Thumb, and The Bushwick Starr, and will appear at Playwrights Horizons and Steppenwolf in 2018. She is the recipient of an Obie Award, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award at The Vineyard, and the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. Barron was also the co-winner of the inaugural 2015 Relentless Award established in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman for her play Dance Nation. She lives in Brooklyn. * An excerpt from Baby Screams Miracle CYNTHIA Kayden, come here. Do you know who I am? KAYDEN Aunt Cynthia CYNTHIA No, I’m your sister. Sister Cynthia. Because your mommy and daddy had me when they were very, very young. And then they didn’t really want me like they wanted you, so. So you know what that means? That means you’re a very lucky girl. And that means you have a big sister. And right now, I know it feels like I’m more of a mommy than a sister, but one day we’re gonna both be grown-ups and we’re gonna talk about grown-up things and we’ll be like sisters. I’m excited for that. I’m excited for that to happen. (Kayden looks at her.) CYNTHIA Your mom and dad are pretty nice now, huh? (Kayden nods.) CYNTHIA That’s good. They don’t yell at you or— KAYDEN Sometimes they yell CYNTHIA Well, yeah, sometimes they have to yell. They take you to the park and the ice-skating rink… KAYDEN Dairy Queen CYNTHIA Oh yeah? That’s good. That’s cool. They let you go to the bathroom whenever you need to? KAYDEN Yeah CYNTHIA That’s good. (Kayden looks at her.) CYNTHIA You’re very shy, do you know that? I think your mommy and daddy think there’s something wrong with you but I just think you’re shy and quiet. Do you think that’s true? KAYDEN I don’t know CYNTHIA You shouldn’t be shy. Being shy doesn’t get you very far in life. You have to put yourself out there, you know. You have to stand out. People say it’s the shy, nerdy kids who come back and get revenge later in life, but they’re wrong. It’s the kids with charisma, you know what I’m saying? The homecoming queen. That’s who you want to be. That’s who dominates everyone else from the time she’s born until the time she dies. It’s true. (Pause.) Come on. Let’s practice. I say dance, you dance. Got it? I say dance, you dance. Okay. Dance. (Kayden doesn’t move.) CYNTHIA You have to dance. You have to move. You have to not be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Come on. Dance. Dance. Dance, Kayden. Dance. (Kayden doesn’t move.) CYNTHIA Give me your shoes. KAYDEN What? CYNTHIA You didn’t dance. Now you have to give me your shoes. (Kayden takes off her shoes and gives them to Cynthia.) CYNTHIA Okay. Let’s try this again. Dance. I want you to dance. Come on. I don’t care how you dance. I don’t care how well you dance. Just move. Just moooove, god dammit. Do something. (Kayden doesn’t move.) CYNTHIA Give me your pants. (Kayden takes off her pants and hands them to Cynthia.) CYNTHIA I bet you feel pretty silly without your pants. And it’s cold outside. And another storm is coming soon. And you’re going to be without your shoes and without your pants and who knows what else. So you better dance, don’t you think? (Kayden bends at the knee a little bit—up and down.) CYNTHIA Are you dancing? I can’t tell. Is that dancing? Read more from the 2017 Whiting honorees.
March 22, 2017 Whiting Awards 2017 Kaitlyn Greenidge, Fiction By Whiting Honorees Kaitlyn Greenidge. Photo by Syreeta McFadden. Kaitlyn Greenidge was born in Boston and received her MFA from Hunter College. Her work has appeared in The Believer, American Short Fiction, Guernica, Kweli Journal, The Feminist Wire, and others. She is the recipient of fellowships from Lower Manhattan Community Council’s Workspace Program and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among other prizes. Her novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was published by Algonquin in 2016. She lives in Brooklyn. Read More
March 22, 2017 Whiting Awards 2017 Lisa Halliday, Fiction By Whiting Honorees Lisa Halliday. Photo by Vittore Buzzi. Lisa Halliday’s work has appeared in The Paris Review. She previously worked at The Wylie Agency and is a freelance editor and translator in Milan. Her novel, Asymmetry, will be published by Simon and Schuster in 2018. * An excerpt from Asymmetry: It was still four-four in the bottom of the ninth when he muted a Viagra ad and swiveled brightly to face her. “Darling, in the cooler in the back of the deli here on the corner they have Häagen Dazs bars. Do you want one?” “Now?” “Sure. You’ll be right back. But listen. I want vanilla on the inside, chocolate on the outside, nuts. If they don’t have that I want chocolate on the inside, chocolate on the outside, no nuts. And if they don’t have that I want vanilla on the inside, chocolate on the outside, no nuts. Plus whatever you want, darling. My wallet’s right on the table there. Go!” At the deli they only had raspberry. And in the convenience store one block up they had only chocolate on the inside, chocolate on the outside, nuts. Alice picked one up and stared at it for a faintly agonizing moment — it wasn’t even the right brand — before putting it back again and running the long block over to Amsterdam, where, in the narrow all-sorts shop that sold pornography next to Caramel Creams, she found, in the back, a freezer stocked almost exclusively with vanilla on the inside, chocolate on the outside, nuts. “Sí!” The cashier was eating takeout and watching a television stashed under the counter. “What happened?” Alice asked. “Ortiz struck out.” Fork aloft, he continued watching for a moment before lifting his free hand to take Ezra’s money; when at last he looked up and saw the B on Alice’s hat he inhaled sharply. “Ah, la enemiga.” “Where have you been?” Ezra asked her when she got back. In the twelfth inning, Ortiz tried to steal second but was called out after Jeter, legs spread, sprung vertically into the air to catch a high throw from Posada. He snagged it, and, after seeming to hang in space for an impossibly long moment, returned to the ground and tagged Papi on the back. “My God,” said Ezra, pointing his ice cream stick at the screen. “For a moment I thought I was watching Nijinsky.” “Ugh. I can’t stand him. Look how smug he looks.” “Remember when we used to have sex, Mary-Alice?” “He was safe!” “No he wasn’t, darling.” “Yes he was!” In the thirteenth, Varitek dropped three knuckleballs, letting Yankees advance to second and third. Alice groaned. Another sign went up in the stands: BELIEVE. “In what?” said Ezra. “The Tooth Fairy?” With two outs in the bottom of the fourteenth, Ortiz fouled right, then left, plus two more fouls up and over the backstop, then hit a fair ball that dropped down in centerfield, driving Johnny Damon home. “Hoooraaaaaaaayy!” “All right, Choo. That’s it. Time for bed.” * “Uh, Mary-Alice,” he said to her voicemail the following morning, less than an hour after she’d left. “I’m sorry to ask you this, but before you come over here this evening — I assume you are coming over here this evening — would you mind first going to Zabar’s and picking up some applesauce? The chunky kind? I’ll pay you back.” His voice sounded flat and irritable, drained of the previous evening’s garrulousness, and when Alice arrived after an emergency e-book meeting that had run the full length of the afternoon he was holding his back, pacing and grimacing again, the television on mute and an electric heating pad warming the empty seat of his chair. As quietly as she could she put the applesauce into the refrigerator, got a tumbler down from the cupboard, and unwound the wax on a new bottle of Knob Creek. CALL MEL RE: WILL read a Post-it note stuck to the counter. A second note next to it read Q-TIPS!!! Even the way this looked in his incontrovertible hand made her feel a fool for ever thinking she could write. When she looked up again he was in his chair, neck stoically erect, the back of his head like a wax copy of itself if not for its infinitesimal pulsing. She carried her drink to the bed and lay across it. In the flickering silence they watched the pre-game graphics as intently as if any moment now their own life expectancies would be posted there. GAME 3: LONGEST 9 INN. GAME IN POSTSEASON HISTORY (4:20). GAME 5: LONGEST GAME IN POSTSEASON HISTORY (5:49). 21 HOURS, 46 MINUTES TOTAL OF 1ST 5 GAMES. 1,864 PITCHES. Alice memorized each lineup, briefly contemplated life in the Dominican Republic, and wondered about dinner. Her instinct, as ever, if not innate then informed by old childhood fears, was to ride out and perhaps even allay such moods by being as still and quiet as possible. But the bourbon had different ideas. “I love that color,” she said, when the screen cut to a wide shot of Yankee Stadium with its grass mown into stripes that were actually two slightly different shades of emerald. A long moment later, Ezra replied in a low and even voice: “Yes. Night-game green.” When Jon Lieber took to the mound, Alice got up again to refresh her drink. “Would it be all right if we turned the sound on now?” It was too loud, as though the night before they’d been watching with a dozen friends all laughing and chatting at once, and one of the announcers had a slight Southern accent that sounded almost stoned in its serenity, the other a rich, reassuring baritone not dissimilar to the one that narrated the Viagra ads. Babbling away about the bullpen, Curt Schilling’s tendon, and the “difficult conditions” presented by the weather, their voices filled the little room like disembodied dinner guests trying to ignore the tension mounting between their hosts. Forecast: Drizzle. Wind speed: 14MPH, left to right. Superimposed against the misty skyline, her and Ezra’s reflections in the yellow glow of his reading lamp had the trapped and inanimate look of dollhouse detainees. Alone together, together alone… Except of course they weren’t alone. Ezra’s pain was with them. Ezra, his pain, and Alice, barely tolerable envoy from the enraging world of the healthy. Read more work from the 2017 Whiting Award winners.
March 22, 2017 Whiting Awards 2017 Simone White, Poetry By Whiting Honorees Simone White is the author of Of Being Dispersed (Futurepoem Books, 2016), Unrest (Ugly Duckling Presse/Dossier Series, 2013), House Envy of All the World (Factory School/Heretical Texts, 2010) and the collaborative poem/painting chapbook Dolly, with Kim Thomas (Q Avenue Press, 2008). Dear Angel of Death, a book of criticism and poems, will be published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2017. Simone is a Cave Canem fellow and was selected as a New American Poet for the Poetry Society of America in 2013. She is Program Director at The Poetry Project and Visiting Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at The New School, Eugene Lang College. She lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. * An excerpt from Lotion: Lotion is a palliative. What does it correct? It corrects ash. What is ashiness? Ash is a gray track of evident decay, most striking in contrast with darker skins, brown skins, tending to black. After bathing, I apply both face and body lotions. After handwashing, hand lotion. In the winter, I apply an extra layer of thick oily cream, too oily for the hands (but good for the thin skin on the shins that cracks in cold, dry weather) to my heels and elbows. Sometimes I notice a black woman unknown to me, not homeless, whose legs or feet or hands are so ashy that I wonder whether she has lost her mind. Liniments are a second class of lotions, meant to address a deeper set of problems. I find myself on my knees with some rags and a bucket filled with scalding hot soapy water and bleach. My mother has visited and discovered some scuzz on the stepladder that I am obliged to use for retrieving bowls, pitchers and the like from the uppermost shelves in my apartment. I am wiping clots of greasy dirt from the rungs of this already ugly metal thing, scrubbing also the dirty bands of floor that protrude beyond spaces that “cannot be cleaned” — the edge-of-under the refrigerator, the stove, the dishwasher, the poorly installed, cheap formica cabinets. Filth. On my knees now, I perform an act of penitence; in that this dirt has been discovered and named and pointed to, I am humiliated; in that suggestions have been made regarding the method of its eradication, too, I am humiliated. Over the telephone, my mother insists that I kneel, of course, on some towels or sheets, folded several times to protect my knees from being scratched or scraped, made dark or scaly from work. “Are you wearing gloves?” she asks. “You wouldn’t want to get an infection. It’s how your father almost lost his arm. They made him scrub the floors.” My father had osteomyelitis as a teenager. A serious infection led to several botched surgeries, all performed while he was locked up in a facility for juveniles somewhere outside Philadelphia. In fights, he used his casts as weapons and never recovered the full use of his scarred right arm and hand. I never knew that, about the floors, I tell my mother, sloshing a rag around in the putrid bucket. Our crooked fingers are soft, soft, all my parents’ children. I maintain dominion over the crevices of myself, deep into the layers of my skin, which must never be questioned. Never doubt that these crevices extend toward an infinitely receding boundary. Come close to me to feel it. Read more work from the 2017 Whiting Award honorees.