The Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction

Special Guest Judge, Edgar Gomez:

“A poignant exploration of grief, identity, and the weight of familial expectations, Flaws offers us the lyrical and evocative story of a daughter unpacking her relationship with her ailing father. Jer Xiong avoids easy answers, instead leaning into complexity to ultimately create a rich and deeply felt portrait of a family. Compassionate, nuanced, full of haunting imagery, I gasped when I reached the last line.”

Edgar Gomez (he/they) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, his words have appeared in The LA Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, New York Magazine, and beyond. His debut memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, received a 2023 American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir. Gomez’s second book, a darkly-comic memoir-in-essays titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown. His work has been supported by The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez.