Each year The Story Prize enlists three judges to choose the winner from among the three short story collections we select as finalists and announce in January. In alternating years one of the judges is bookseller and one is a librarian. One judge is always a short story writer, and the third can be a critic, editor, or academic.
The judges who will choose the 22nd winner of The Story Prize—which we'll announce on March 31, 2026—are author and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer, past winner of The Story Prize Ling Ma, and Chicago librarian Stephen Sposato. We'll announce the three finalists in January.
Benjamin Dreyer, author of the New York Times bestseller Dreyer’s English, is the retired copy chief and managing editor of the Random House division of Penguin Random House. He has copyedited books by writers including E. L. Doctorow, Janet Evanovich, Rachel Joyce, Frank Rich, and Elizabeth Strout, as well as Let Me Tell You, a volume of previously uncollected material by Shirley Jackson. He lives in Santa Monica, California.
Ling Ma is author of the novel Severance and the story collection Bliss Montage, a recipient of the 2023 Story Prize. Other honors include the MacArthur Fellowship, the Whiting Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her short stories, published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Yale Review, have also been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories and twice received the O. Henry Prize. She lives in Chicago and teaches at the University of Chicago.
Stephen Sposato is the Collection Development Manager at Chicago Public Library, where he has worked in several positions since 1995. He has presented at conferences such as the American Library Association, Illinois Library Association, and BookExpo America. He has served on the LibraryReads Steering Committee, the RUSA CODES Board, the RUSA CODES Readers' Advisory Research and Trends Committee, and the Notable Books Council and served as chair of the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence selection committee.