March 20, 2019 Whiting Awards 2019 Michael R. Jackson, Drama By Michael R. Jackson Michael R. Jackson. Photo: Joey Stocks. Michael R. Jackson holds a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. in playwriting and musical theater writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. As a songwriter, he has seen his work performed everywhere from Joe’s Pub to the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. He wrote lyrics and cowrote the book for the musical adaptation of the 2007 horror film Teeth with composer and co-bookwriter Anna K. Jacobs. He wrote the book, music, and lyrics for the musicals White Girl in Danger and A Strange Loop (which receives its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in coproduction with Page 73 Productions in May 2019). He has received a 2017 Jonathan Larson Grant, a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, a 2017 ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award, and a 2016/2017 Dramatist Guild Fellowship, and was the 2017 Williamstown Theatre Festival Playwright-in-Residence. He has commissions from Grove Entertainment, Barbara Whitman Productions, and LCT3. * Excerpt from A Strange Loop: (Blackness. Intermission chimes. Lights on USHER, a black queer man with his back to us ringing chimes from the back of a theater that manifests as a strange loop in his mind, along with silhouettes of his THOUGHTS who stand by facing us, blinking like a cursor.) #1. INTERMISSION SONG (INTRO) (THOUGHTS) USHER Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats; the second act is about to begin! Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your seats; the second act is about to begin! It will feature performers running down the aisles and wearing pantaloons and gaudy flowing robes that I think are meant to indicate the wholesome corporate beauty of “Mother Africa”! There will be swinging birds on fishing poles and a black Ken doll with a crossover dialect in a lion costume! What else? Oh, yes! In the background, there will be a young overweight-to-obese homosexual and/or gay and/or queer assigned male at birth, cisgender, able-bodied university-and-graduate-school educated, musical theater writing, broke-ass middle-class politically far left-leaning black-identified and classified American descendant of slaves full of self-conscious femme energy who thinks he’s probably a vers bottom but not totally certain of that dressed in an usher uniform! Surrounded by his extremely persistent Thoughts! Read More
March 20, 2019 Whiting Awards 2019 Hernan Diaz, Fiction By Hernan Diaz Hernan Diaz. Photo: Jason Fulford. Hernan Diaz edits an academic journal for Columbia University and is the author of Borges, between History and Eternity (Bloomsbury, 2012). His first novel, In the Distance, was a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of 2017 and a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His fiction has been published by the Kenyon Review, Playboy, Granta, and The Paris Review. * An excerpt from In the Distance: He was overwhelmed by an active, all-consuming hollowness—a corrosive shadow wiping out the world in its progress, a stillness that had nothing to do with peace, a voracious silence craving total desolation, an infectious nothingness colonizing everything. All that remained in its soundless, barren wake was an almost undetectable vibration. But in the absence of everything else, this faint drone was unbearable. Håkan had neither the will to make it stop (a simple task carried out with some sense of purpose, like keeping his course or cooking a meal, would probably have been enough) nor the strength to endure it. With the last dregs of consciousness he was able to scrape up, he managed to find a more or less hospitable spot with some water in it, surrounded by decent pasture fields. He tied the horse and the burro with long ropes, unpacked his tin box, and, from one of the vials kept there, took a few drops of Lorimer’s sedative tincture. For a few moments—it was so fleeting—he did not matter, and that did not matter. There was sky. There was a body. And a planet underneath it. And it was all lovely. And it did not matter. He had never been happy before. And it did not matter. Read More
March 20, 2019 Whiting Awards 2019 Tyree Daye, Poetry By Tyree Daye Tyree Daye. Photo: Marc Hall. Tyree Daye is a poet from Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the author of two poetry collections: River Hymns, the 2017 APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner, and Cardinal, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Daye is a 2017 Ruth Lilly finalist and a Cave Canem fellow. Daye’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, the New York Times, and Nashville Review. He won the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship and is the 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-in-Residence and a 2019 Kate Tufts finalist. * “Say River, See River” I threw up the river last night trout already gutted salamanders rocking between the books on my bedroom floor then the river stood up bowlegged it walked like it was drunk like it was an uncle so I followed the dizzy river into my mother’s backyard watched it fall and flood the houses Read More
March 20, 2019 Whiting Awards 2019 Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Poetry By Kayleb Rae Candrilli Kayleb Rae Candrilli. Photo: Jack Papanier. Kayleb Rae Candrilli is the author of What Runs Over, winner of the 2016 Pamet River Prize, published by YesYes Books. They are also author of All the Gay Saints, winner of the 2018 Saturnalia Book Prize and forthcoming in 2020. Candrilli’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Booth, and RHINO, among others. Candrilli was a 2015 Lambda Literary Emerging Fellow in Nonfiction and a 2017 fellow in poetry. They live in Philadelphia. * Two excerpts from What Runs Over: On the mountain ………….we used to feed each other ……………………..bullets to say I love you. We used to walk around with …………….mouthfuls of slugs and feel weighed ……………………….deep down into the dirt. My family is so far ……………apart now I can only ……………………..reach them by bullet. I check my wristwatch and take …………..the curvature of the earth …………………….into consideration. Read More
March 20, 2019 Whiting Awards 2019 Introducing the Winners of the 2019 Whiting Awards By The Paris Review For the fifth consecutive year, The Paris Review Daily is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 Whiting Awards. As in previous years, we’re also delighted to share excerpts from work by each of the winners. Here’s the list of honorees: Kayleb Rae Candrilli, poetry Tyree Daye, poetry Hernan Diaz, fiction Michael R. Jackson, drama Terese Marie Mailhot, nonfiction Nadia Owusu, nonfiction Nafissa Thompson-Spires, fiction Merritt Tierce, fiction Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, poetry Lauren Yee, drama Since 1985, the Whiting Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The awards, of fifty thousand dollars each, are based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come. Previous recipients include Lydia Davis, Deborah Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eugenides, Tony Kushner, Sigrid Nunez, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Mona Simpson, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Colson Whitehead. Explore all the winners here. Congratulations to this year’s honorees. Those who live in New York can see the 2019 winners read from their work in the Strand’s Rare Book Room on Thursday, March 21. And for more great writing from Whiting Award recipients, check out our collections of work from the 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 winners.