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
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Nathan Alan Davis, Drama By Nathan Alan Davis Nathan Alan Davis, who has an “uncanny gift for allegory and language, boiling down the large narratives of the African-American past to the scale of individuals wrestling to express themselves,” is a playwright from Rockford, Illinois, now based in New York. His plays include Nat Turner in Jerusalem; Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea; and The Wind and the Breeze. His work has recently been commissioned or developed by The Public Theater, Arena Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival, McCarter Theatre, NYTW and The Lark. Davis received his M.F.A. from Indiana University and B.F.A. from the University of Illinois. * An excerpt from Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea: DONTRELL wakes from a vivid dream. He picks up a minicassette recorder, turns it on and speaks into it. In doing so, he addresses the audience. DONTRELL Captain’s log: Future generations, whoever finds this: I hope it finds you well. This Dontrell Jones the Third, of Baltimore. Spittin’ to you live through space and time. As your advanced technologies and mental-intuitive capacities may or may not allow you to decipher, I’m in my PJs right now. T-shirt and mesh. That’s how I rest. But If I had known last night what I would dream!? … Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Patrick Cottrell, Fiction By Patrick Cottrell Patrick Cottrell, who “opens up fresh lines of questioning in the old interrogations of identity, the politics of belonging, and the problem of other minds,” was born in Korea and raised in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Milwaukee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Guernica, BOMB, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, and other places. His debut novel, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, was published by McSweeney’s last year. He lives and works in Los Angeles. * An excerpt from Sorry to Disrupt the Peace: At the time of his death I was a thirty-two-year-old woman, single, childless, irregularly menstruating, college educated, and partially employed. If I looked in the mirror, I saw something upright and plain. Or perhaps hunched over and plain, it depended. Long, long ago I made peace with my plainness. I made peace with piano lessons that went nowhere because I had no natural talent or aptitude for music. I made peace with the coarse black hair that grows out of my head and hangs down stiffly to my shoulders. One day I even made peace with my uterus. Living in New York City for five years, I had discovered the easiest way to distinguish oneself was to have a conscience or a sense of morality, since most people in Manhattan were extraordinary thieves of various standing, some of them multi-billionaires. Over time, I became a genius at being ethical, I discovered that it was my true calling. I made little to no money as a part-time after-school supervisor of troubled young people, with the side work of ordering paper products for the toilets. After my first week, the troubled people gave me a nickname. Read More
March 21, 2018 Whiting Awards 2018 Anne Boyer, Poetry and Nonfiction By Anne Boyer Anne Boyer, whose work “unsettles all the familiar shapes of memoir and poetry to build a new city, one where worn ideas of labor and creativity are a monument toppled in the square,” is a U.S. poet and essayist and the inaugural winner of the 2018 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Art. She is the author of four books: A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, The Romance of Happy Workers, My Common Heart, and Garments Against Women. * An excerpt from Garments Against Women: It was a time of many car troubles, so I waited for tow trucks and saw a squirrel with a marble in her mouth. It was a time of many money troubles, so I wrote about money or wanted to. I thought I would write about money and then those who did not yet write about money would soon write about money. What was I, poor? I spent seventy-three cents on a cookie for my daughter. I got a fifty-dollar Wal-Mart gift card in the mail. I sold a painting of a lamb for three hundred and eighty-five dollars. Read More