Other Outstanding 2012 Collections

When you read 98 short story collections in a year, as we did in 2012, a variety of factors beyond what's on the page contribute to the impression you form of any particular book. These include: the amount of time you have to read each (many arrive close to our July and November deadlines), the order you read them in, where you are when you read them, your own biases (some you're aware of, some you're not), even the state of mind you're in when you pick a particular book up. Although over time a consensus can form about certain authors (e.g., Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and William Trevor) or short story collections (Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find, J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories, or Dennis Johnson's Jesus' Son) whose excellence isn't in doubt, reading is largely subjective.

That makes it hard to choose three short story collections as finalists, one for The Story Prize Spotlight Award, and a list of other outstanding collections beyond those four. Which is to say that the absence of a book from a list like this isn't a reflection of its quality. Every author who published a short story collection in 2012 succeeded against the odds, accomplished something exemplary, and deserves to take a bow, as did the 65 publishers and imprints that put out the books we read.

Here then are twelve worthy titles, beyond our three finalists and The Story Prize Spotlight Award winner:

• Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie (Grove/Atlantic)
• Hush Hush by Steven Barthelme (Melville House)
• Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino (University of Iowa Press)
• Little Sinners by Karen Brown, (University of Nebraska Press)
• Astray by Emma Donoghue, (Little, Brown)
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Windeye by Brian Evenson, (Coffee House Press)
• She Loves Me Not by Ron Hansen, (Scribner)
• The Doctor's Wife by Luis Jaramillo (Dzanc Books)
• Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain by Lucia Perillo (W.W. Norton)
• The Book of Mischief by Steven Stern, (Graywolf Press)
• Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty by Diane Williams, (McSweeney's Books)

The Story Prize Judges: Sherman Alexie, Breon Mitchell, and Louise Steinman

The Story Prize is fortunate this year to have Hollywood types Jorge Cloony* and Sofia Lorren* announce this year's judges (Sherman Alexie, Breon Mitchell, and Louise Steinman) live** from the White House:†

 (The transcript)

Jorge Klooney: Do you know who the judges for The Story Prize are?
Sofia Lorren: Yes. I hear the brilliant novelist/short story writer/poet/screenwriter/director Sherman Alexie is one of the judges.
Jorge: Whoa! Those are a lot of slashes. You know, I am an actor/writer/director.
Sofia: I will ignore that. Another judge is Professor Breon Mitchell of Indiana University.
Jorge: Say isn't he a well known translator of books such as The Tin Drum and The Trial by Franz Kafka, not to mention the Director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University?
Sofia: Indeed
Jorge: And who is the third judge,? Not that creep Simon Whatever, I hope.
Sofia: The Story Prize has better taste than that. The third judge this year is Louise Steinman.
Jorge: Say, isn't she the curator of the ALOUD reading/conversation series for the L.A. Public Library and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC?
Sofia: Yes. She is also an author and a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Jorge: Wow! That is quite a lineup. I can't wait to find out which three books they choose as finalists for The Story Prize.
Sofia: The judges do NOT choose the finalists. Julie Lindsey and Larry Dark do that.
Jorge: Oh, I guess that is just a popular misconception. The judges choose the winner from among the three finalists.
Sofia: Now you have it! The Story Prize will announce its finalists in January. And the winner -- as chosen by Alexie, Mitchell, and Steinman -- will be announced on March 21, 2012.
Jorge: That's at the end of an evening of readings by and interviews with the authors.
Sofia: Yes. It will be at The New School in New York City. So mark it on your calendar. And, remember...
Jorge: Keep it short!

For more on The Story Prize judges, see our Web site. In the weeks ahead, we hope to feature each judge in a separate blog post. 

*    celebrity lookalike avatars
**  okay, not live, pre-recorded
†   location lookalike avatar