Cohen Awards
Each year, we honor the best short story and poem published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners — each of whom receives a cash prize of $600 — are selected by our advisory editors. This award is not open for the submission of manuscripts.
| Award Year |
Winning Story/Poem |
Issue |
| 2010 | ||
| Andria Nacina Cole |
Leaving Women (Fiction) |
Spring 2009 |
| Adrian Blevins |
The Waning (Poetry) |
Winter 2009-10 |
| 2009 | ||
| Tarfia Faizullah | from Interview with a Birangona (Poetry) | Winter 2008-09 |
| Steven Schwartz | Bless Everybody (Fiction) | Fall 2008 |
| 2008 | ||
| Jennifer Grotz | The Life and Times of George Van Den Heuvel (Poetry) | Winter 2007-08 |
| Bret Anthony Johnston | Republican (Fiction) | Fall 2007 |
| 2007 | ||
| Joan Wickersham | The Woodwork (Fiction) | Fall 2006 |
| Victoria Chang | Proof (Poetry) | Spring 2006 |
| 2006 | ||
| Laura Kasischke |
If a Stranger Approaches You about Carrying a Foreign Object with You onto the Plane . . . (Fiction) | Fall 2005 |
| R. T. Smith | Dar He (Poetry) | Spring 2005 |
| 2005 | ||
| Xu Xi | Famine (Fiction) | Winter 2004-05 |
| Daisy Fried | Shooting Kinesha (Poetry) | Spring 2004 |
| 2004 | ||
| Rebecca Soppe | The Pantyhose Man (Fiction) | Winter 2003-04 |
| Jane Mead | Was Light (Poetry) | Spring 2003 |
| 2003 | ||
| Joan Silber | The High Road (Fiction) | Fall 2002 |
| Scott Withiam | Walk Right In (Poetry) | Spring 2002 |
| 2002 | ||
| Julie Orringer | Pilgrims (Fiction) | Spring 2001 |
| Caroline Finkelstein | Conjecture Number One Thousand (Poetry) | Fall 2001 |
| 2001 | ||
| Elizabeth Graver | The Mourning Door (Fiction) | Fall 2000 |
| Adrian C. Louis |
This is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See is Dying (Poetry) | Winter 2000 |
| 2000 | ||
| Judith Grossman | How Aliens Think (Fiction) | Spring 1999 |
| Jonah Winter | Sestina: Bob (Poetry) | Spring 1999 |
| 1999 | ||
| Chris Adrian | The Sum of Our Parts (Fiction) | Winter 1998-99 |
| Herman Fong | Grandfather's Alphabet (Poetry) | Spring 1998 |
| 1998 | ||
| Maxine Swann | Flower Children (Fiction) | Fall 1997 |
| Mark Doty | Mercy on Broadway (Poetry) | Spring 1997 |
| 1997 | ||
| Andrew Sean Greer | Come Live with Me and Be My Love (Fiction) | Fall 1996 |
| Campbell McGrath | Praia dos Orixas (Poetry) | Winter 1996-97 |
| 1996 | ||
| Janet Desaulniers | After Rosa Parks (Fiction) | Winter 1995-96 |
| Louise Glück | Penelope's Stubbornness (Poetry) | Winter 1995-96 |
| 1995 | ||
| Mary Ruefle | Glory (Poetry) | Winter 1994-95 |
| Marshall N. Klimasewiski | Snowfield (Fiction) | Spring 1994 |
| Charles Baxter | Dysfunctional Narratives (Nonfiction) | Fall 1994 |
| 1994 | ||
| Cleopatra Mathis | The Story (Poetry) | Winter 1993-94 |
| Fred Leebron | Lovelock (Fiction) | Fall 1993 |
| 1993 | ||
| Richard Garcia | In the Year 1946 (Poetry) | Spring 1992 |
| Ron Carlson | Blazo (Fiction) | Spring 1992 |
| Debra Spark | The Lure of the West (Nonfiction) | Spring 1992 |
| 1992 | ||
| Tess Gallagher | from The Valentine Elegies (Poetry) | Spring 1991 |
| Richard McCann | Nights of 1990 (Poetry) | Winter 1991-92 |
| Eileen Pollack | Neversink (Fiction) | Fall 1991 |
| Dan Wakefield |
Lion: A Memoir of Mark Van Doren (Nonfiction) | Fall 1991 |
| 1991 | ||
| Susan Mitchell | Night Music (Poetry) | Winter 1990-91 |
| Carol Roh-Spaulding | Waiting for Mr. Kim (Fiction) | Fall 1990 |
| William Kittredge | from Hole in the Sky (Nonfiction) | Winter 1990-91 |
| 1990 | ||
| Patricia Traxler | from The Widow's Words (Poetry) | Winter 1989 |
| Michael Ryan | A Burglary (Poetry) | Spring 1989 |
| Christopher Tilghman | In a Father's Place (Fiction) | Fall 1989 |
| James Carroll | The Virtue of Writing (Nonfiction) | Fall 1989 |
| 1989 | ||
| Dennis Sampson | The Commandment (Poetry) | Winter 1988 |
| Josip Novakovich | The Apple (Fiction) | Fall 1988 |
| Richard Yates | R.V. Cassill's Clem Anderson (Nonfiction) | Fall 1988 |
| 1988 | ||
| Carol Frost | In Scarecrow's Garden (Poetry) | Spring 1987 |
| Linda Bamber | The Time-to-Teach-Jane-Eyre-Again Blues (Fiction) | Fall 1987 |
| Gerald Shapiro | Evan S. Connell: A Profile (Nonfiction) | Fall 1986 |
| 1987 | ||
| Al Young | from 22 Moon Poems (Poetry) | Fall 1986 |
| Mona Simpson | Lonnie Tishman (Fiction) | Spring 1986 |
| Phillip Lopate | Against Joie de Vivre (Nonfiction) | Spring 1986 |
| 1986 (Inaugural Year) | ||
| Tom Sleigh | Hope (Poetry) | Winter 1984 |
| Gerald Duff | Fire Ants (Fiction) | Winter 1984 |
| Domenic Stansberry | John Gardner: The Return Home (Nonfiction) | Fall 1984 |
Also see our list of Zacharis Award winners, honoring each year the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer.
And take a look at the 129 stories, poems, and essays from Ploughshares that have appeared over the last thirty-two years in The Best American Poetry, The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.