Tuesday, March 31, 2026

The 22nd Winner of The Story Prize is OTHER WORLDS by André Alexis!

Photo © Nathalie Scheuller

The winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2025 is André Alexis for Other Worlds (FSG Originals). The other finalists were Lydia Millet for Atavists (W.W. Norton & Company) and Ayşegül Savaş for Long Distance (Bloomsbury Publishing). The Story Prize’s $20,000 top prize is among the largest first-prize amounts of any annual U.S. book award for fiction. As runners-up, Millet and Savaş each received $5,000. 

Other Worlds is is Alexis’ second short story collection. Among his other publications are the five novels of his Quincunx series, published by Coach House Books in Toronto. He has also won Canada’s Giller Prize and Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell prize in fiction. 

Director Larry Dark and Founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists for The Story Prize, now in its 22nd year, from among 114 short story collections published in 2025, representing 72 different publishers or imprints. Three judges—writer and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer; writer and past Story Prize winner Ling Ma, and Chicago librarian Stephen Sposato—determined the winner from among the three books chosen as finalists.