In addition to naming three finalists each year, we also present The Story Prize Spotlight Award to a collection of exceptional merit. Selected books can be promising works by first-time authors, collections in alternative formats, or works that demonstrate an unusual perspective on the writer's craft. The award includes a prize of $1,000.
Trying to Be by
John Haskell (FC2) is the 14th winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award. Chosen from among the 114 books we received as entries in 2025, this slender collection of nine stories walks the line between the essay and the short story, exploring aspects both of trying and being through the lenses of painting, film, dance, and both public and private histories. Touchstones include painters Francis Bacon and Diego Velasquez, German radical and journalist Ulrike Meinhof, dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer, actor Danny Kaye, the author's Aunt Dot, and characters in films such as
Blow-Up and
Five Miles to Midnight.
John Haskell’s other books include I Am Not Jackson Pollock, American Purgatorio, Out of My Skin, and The Complete Ballet, a fictional essay. He has been a performer and playwright, written artist catalogues, and contributed to books. His fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s, Conjunctions, The Baffler, and The Yale Review. He is a contributing editor at BOMB and A Public Space, and has performed on the radio shows The Next Big Thing and Studio 360. His awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and several NYFA grants, and he’s taught writing and literature around the world. Trying to Be was the 2025 winner of FC2's Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize.
The 13 previous winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award were: Drifting House by Krys Lee, Byzantium by Ben Stroud, Praying Drunk by Kyle Minor, Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar, Subcortical by Lee Conell, Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy, The Trojan War Museum by Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Inheritors by Asako Serizawa, Born Into This by Adam Thompson, God's Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu, The Goth House Experiment by SJ Sindu, and, most recently, The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck.
You can find links to all fourteen books, including Haskell's, on Bookshop, in the list Winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award. And you can also find Trying to Be on the list The Story Prize: 2025 collections received.
We'll announce the winner of The Story Prize on March 31 at a private event, which we'll live stream, featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists: Other Worlds by André Alexis, Atavists by Lydia Millet, and Other Worlds by Ayşegül Savaş. And soon we'll post a long list of additional short story collections published in 2025.
