What the Judges had to say about the winner of The Story Prize, OTHER WORLDS by André Alexis

photo © Nathalie Schueller

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were writer and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer, writer and past winner of The Story Prize Ling Ma, and librarian Stephen Sposato. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about winner Other Worlds by André Alexis.

“Other Worlds so seamlessly traverses the boundaries of time, of nationality, and of genre that such boundaries seem diaphanous. This fleet-footed collection is both rooted in oral and literary traditions and yet entirely contemporary. Being many things at once, full of sly innovations, and quietly upending of conventions, Other Worlds is wholly original and wholly itself. It is also very funny.” 

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“The stories in André Alexis’s Other Worlds are enthralling in their variety (of geographical setting, of period, of theme; some profoundly intimate, others wide-ranging) and elegance, haunting and haunted, often mystically—indeed and as promised in the collection's title—otherworldly and yet very much grounded in our own actual, solid world. Some of the stories focus with great precision on issues of class, race, and culture; all of them aim for and achieve a humane universality. And for those of us who thrive on plot, suspense, and surprise, those are all in abundance here as well. 

“I began reading each story—of a young woman's chance encounter with a fabled painter whose connection to her own history might be of even more paramount importance than she suspects; of a writer who takes on a job as a kind of custodian to a mystifyingly unnerving town; of, even, a talking horse (this one nearly broke me)—thinking ‘I can't imagine where this is going to go’ and then following along delightedly (though often anxiously, in the best possible way) as Alexis confidently guided me. 

“I particularly enjoyed this collection on a sentence by sentence basis: There's a kind of gossamer lightness to Alexis's prose, a seeming effortlessness, but as I reread passages, which I found myself doing frequently, I appreciated all the more the erudition and the gorgeous construction.”

What The Story Prize judges had to say about LONG DISTANCE by finalist Ayşegül Savaş

Photo © Nathalie Schueller

When the three judges for The Story Prize vote for the winner of the award, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were writer and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer, writer and past winner of The Story Prize Ling Ma, and Chicago librarian Stephen Sposato. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Long Distance by finalist Ayşegül Savaş: 

“Across thirteen subtle and captivating stories, Long Distance masterfully explores the dislocations and disruptions of the modern world, from the macro level of war and immigration to the intimate twists and shadows of the human heart. Savaş patiently tests her characters, probing their relationships to friends, family, lovers, colleagues, hosts, servants, and strangers alike, revealing the initial moments of cultural and moral fissure that crack open between them. Empathetic and clear-eyed, these masterful, gracefully written stories portray characters grappling with the unexpected decisions that will define their lives.” 

What The Story Prize judges had to say about ATAVISTS by finalist Lydia Millet

Photo © Nathalie Schueller

When the three judges for The Story Prize vote for the winner of the award, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were writer and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer, writer and past winner of The Story Prize Ling Ma, and Chicago librarian Stephen Sposato. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Atavists by Story Prize finalist Lydia Millet:  

“Atavists is brilliantly constructed, with stories that not only intricately connect a web of common characters but also advance a satisfying chronological narrative. With great skill, Millet both pokes fun at her characters and evokes tender feelings toward them, revealing the essential truth that we are as much defined by our flaws—and our acceptance of the flaws of those around us—as by our aspirations and accomplishments. Even the titles are clever, each reflecting an ‘ism’ specific to the point-of-view character. Though the deftly written stories in Atavists are humorous in tone, they also explore serious contemporary issues, without shrinking away from the ominous, near certain repercussions in the not-too-distant future. And yet, the final, well-earned ism remains a hopeful one.”

The 2025 Judges for The Story Prize are Benjamin Dreyer, Ling Ma, and Stephen Sposato

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.  

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Highway Thirteen by Story Prize Winner Fiona McFarlane

photo: Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were writer and editor Elliott Holt, writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and bookseller Lucy Yu. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane.

“Highway Thirteen is a kaleidoscopic collection, offering a multifaceted view of the ordinary people affected by one serial killer in Australia. Fiona McFarlane writes with psychological precision and a masterful sense of suspense. Each story is artfully constructed and the way they fit together, spanning twenty-eight years, is nothing short of dazzling. Fiona McFarlane’s book is a tour de force about the stories we tell, the surprising ways our lives connect, and the ripple effects of violence.”

What the Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Ghost Pains by Jessi Jezewska Stevens

When the three judges for The Story Prize vote for the winner of the award, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were writer and editor Elliott Holt, writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and bookseller Lucy Yu. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Ghost Pains by Jessi Jezewska Stevens: 

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

“Few books luxuriate in the possibility of language as does Ghost Pains. And few authors take such apparent pleasure in the swirl of wordplay, anxiety, and loneliness as does Jessi Jezewska Stevens. The nervous, insecure narrators are a joy to meet—at an interview for a light journalism piece, at a catastrophically sad party, out in the world—because they represent the uncertainty of the reader, the longing for connection, and the impossibility of true comfort or rest. In these times, this is a book that meets the moment head-on and refuses to look away. That Stevens is a master of words elevates each tale to the level of high art.” 

What the Story Prize Judges Had to Say About There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr.

When the three judges for The Story Prize vote for the winner of the award, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were writer and editor Elliott Holt, writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and bookseller Lucy Yu. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr.: 

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

“Ruben Reyes Jr. shows there is no way to outrun the past. The distance someone attempts to travel away from all the selves they carry is the same distance one must travel from their own physical body. The consequential state of this is a half-lived experience in permanent limbo. There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven portrays the fragility of hunger for convenience and control. Then Reyes Jr. explores the distinct consequences of believing that control can be bought, which causes constant unsettling murmurs in one’s soul. Ultimately, he shows the impossibilities of buying ourselves out of pain while shattering this notion’s associated capitalistic ideals.

“This story collection and its anachronistic approach to grief show the ever-present nature of its cyclical appearances even as some characters attempt to run from the feeling. The nonlinear style mimics the blurriness of time as it exists through memories. Reading these stories has shown me there is no easy transactional way to connect with generational past or identity, and it is impossible to skirt around the pain of confrontation. This repeated confrontation of self is a necessary step on the path to the freedom of living in the present moment. This book delicately balances both the profound proudness and guilt of immigrants living completely different lives compared to those of even recent ancestors. These stories caution against the pseudo ideal of assimilating into capitalism that ultimately causes the removal of the history of self and severs the connection to our humanity”

The 21st Winner of The Story Prize Is Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane!

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

The winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2024 is Fiona McFarlane for Highway Thirteen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The other finalists were Ruben Reyes Jr. for There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven (Mariner Books) and Jessi Jezewska Stevens for Ghost Pains (And Other Stories). 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, Reyes and Stevens each received $5,000. 

Highway Thirteen is McFarlane's fourth book of fiction and her second short story collection. The judges cited the book for the conceptual and thematic ingenuity of the collection as a whole and the precise and astute execution of the individual stories.

Director Larry Dark and Founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists for The Story Prize, now in its 21st year, from among 107 short story collections published in 2024, representing 87 different publishers or imprints. Three judges—writer and editor Elliott Holt; writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and bookseller Lucy Yu—determined the winner from among the three books chosen as finalists.

The 2024/25 Story Prize Finalists Are Fiona McFarlane, Ruben Reyes Jr., and Jessi Jezewska Stevens

The Story Prize, now in its 21st year, is pleased to honor as its finalists three outstanding short story collections chosen from 107 submissions representing 82 different publishers or imprints. Although it's no easy task to narrow the list down to three books, these collections particularly stood out for their originality in concept and execution.

The finalists are: 

• Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr. (Mariner Books)
• Ghost Pains by Jessi Jezewska Stevens (And Other Stories)

Highway Thirteen portrays moments in the lives of characters peripherally connected to an Australian serial killer—from a next door neighbor to an actor playing the killer in a limited TV series to a retired police officer. There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven offers formally inventive narratives contemplating and riffing on aspects of Central American migration to the U.S. Ghost Pains provides a series of precisely written and keenly observed stories about characters in Europe and America facing quotidian predicaments in a time of cultural dissonance.

We'll announce the winner of The Story Prize on the evening of Tuesday, March 25, at a private event featuring readings by and interviews with finalists McFarlane, Reyes, and Stevens. The top prize is $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl. The runners-up will each receive $5,000. We plan to live-stream the event starting at 7:30 p.m. and will post a link before then and the video in the days that follow. 

Story Prize Founder Julie Lindsey and Director Larry Dark selected the finalists. These three independent judges will determine the winner:

• Writer and editor Elliott Holt;
• Writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin; and
• Bookseller Lucy Yu

In the weeks ahead, we'll announce this year's winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award. We'll also publish a longlist of other exceptional collections we read last year. You can find a complete list of the story collections we received in 2024 on Bookshop.org. 

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About The Hive and the Honey by Story Prize Winner Paul Yoon

photo © Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were critic and writer Merve Emre, librarian Allison Escoto, and writer Tania James. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about The Hive and the Honey by Yiyun Li: 

“The seven stories in The Hive and the Honey are uncanny tales of loss and longing. A mother loses a child. A child loses a father. One man loses his home. Another loses his sense of time. Each loss is experienced by the character as a private or secluded grief, but Paul Yoon excavates grief's historic dimensions, revealing the long-lived aftershocks of the Korean War. The genius of the collection lies in its steadiness of style—Yoon's prose is quiet and fine and, at times, painfully precise—and its variety of genre. Domestic realism sits alongside folk tales, ghost stories, and imperial histories. The present is haunted by the past, and the past is violently and beautifully summoned in the present.” 

“The Hive and The Honey is a collection of astonishing breadth, offering a panoramic portrait of Korean diaspora, of lives rescued from the margins of history. Here we encounter a samurai tasked with protecting an orphan boy; a haunted Korean settlement in Far East Russia; men and women fleeing brutal pasts, seeking connection or safety. And yet these characters are more elusive than can be summarized. They reveal themselves most acutely through intimate gestures: a girl inviting a bee to her teacup, a kid licking at the blood from his own broken nose, a man coming home from war with vegetable seeds tucked into his chest pocket. Such moments infuse the ordinary with lasting wonder and could only be achieved by a writer as patient, curious, and masterful as Paul Yoon.”

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li

photo © Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were critic and writer Merve Emre, librarian Allison Escoto, and writer Tania James. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li: 

“Profound loss and its aftermath permeate this elegant collection of stories by a truly gifted writer. The people in these captivating stories are all moving through grief: a woman on a solo trip to Europe after the death of her child. A temporary nanny guides a new, dubious mother through the turbulence of the early days of motherhood, knowing she will have to leave the baby to an uncertain fate. An elderly dying professor reminisces about the small but meaningful moments of her life as her caretaker looks back on the events that guided her to this moment in her life. These characters are indelible, the quiet moments of their lives described through beautiful language. They lead lives that are both compelling and relatable; they stay with you long after you leave their story.”

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Other Minds and Other Stories by Bennett Sims

photo © Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they write citations for their top choices. This year's judges were critic and writer Merve Emre, librarian Allison Escoto, and writer Tania James. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Other Minds and Other Stories by Bennett Sims: 

“Bennett Sims is an original. There are no other stories like the stories in Other Minds and Other Stories (except perhaps those in his previous collection). The book amounts to an intense and artful exploration of the difficulty of truly understanding other minds, and as such also serves as a deep dive into the question of individual identity, of the mind that is seeking to understand. Some of the stories seem to be as much essays or philosophical explorations as they are fiction and unfurl via a single, long unbroken paragraph, a form that echoes the work of the great W.G. Sebald. Sims is extremely erudite with an expansive vocabulary, but his choice of words never seems strained. Other Minds is a collection that challenges the reader but also offers satisfactions comparable to cracking a code or solving a puzzle. When you get it, you get it. These stories invite you to engage, to join the enquiry—and they never condescend. It is an impressive high-wire act, a reading experience unlike any other.”

Announcing the 2023 Story Prize Judges: Merve Emre, Alllison Escoto, and Tania James!

(L to R) Merve Emre, Allison Escoto, and Tania James

Each year The Story Prize enlists three judges to choose the winner from among the three short story collections we select as finalists and annunce 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 20th winner of The Story Prize in March 2024 are critic and writer Merve Emre, head librarian at The Center for Fiction Allison Escoto, and novelist and short story writer Tania James. We didn't aim to have all three judges be women. It just turned out that this was the best group of judges we felt we could assemble this year—a pretty impressive bunch.

Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. Her books include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, The Personality Brokers (selected as one of the best books of 2018 by The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and The Spectator), The Ferrante Letters (winner of the 2021 PROSE award for literature), and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. She has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker.

Allison Escoto is the head librarian and director of education at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. She has worked as a librarian for more than twenty years in various libraries in and around New York City. She also reviews books for Booklist and serves on the ALA RUSA Notables committee. From 2017-2020, she was the Associate Editor for Newtown Literary Journal, a publication dedicated to featuring writers from her beloved Queens.

Tania James is the author of four works of fiction, most recently Loot (Knopf), which was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Freeman’s; Granta; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; and One Story, among other places, and featured on Symphony Space Selected Shorts. An associate professor of English in the MFA program at George Mason University, she lives in Washington, D.C.

What the Judges Had to Say About The Story Prize Winner, Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

Photo © Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were critic, writer, and editor Adam Dalva, writer Danielle Evans, and bookseller and podcaster Miwa Messer. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty:

“There is much to love about this stylish, inventive collection—Ma melds humor and the surreal beautifully, resulting in a project that is at once absurd and insightful. Two of the stories feel like all-time greats: ‘Peking Duck’ is a many-layered masterpiece of telling and retelling that serves as counterpoint to the argument that nothing can be gained by writing about a writing class; ‘Returning’ is a meandering, brilliant look at separation, art, and unique traditions. The rest of the collection lives up to these high points, especially ‘Office Hours,’ with its uncanny ending. Who but Ling Ma could give us flirty yetis and an unforgettable baby arm, dangling? This is an expansive, bold, and delightful book.”

“The stories in Ling Ma’s collection, Bliss Montage, sneak up on you. Relationships old and new, a marriage on the rocks, a friendship that’s run its course, a wildly challenging pregnancy—we think we’ve heard these setups before. But then Ma takes a remarkable tack: 100 ex-boyfriends in your home, an unexpected baby arm, a Yeti, a harrowing homecoming (of sorts). At first the absurdities reveal a familiar sense of disbelief and loss. Sit longer, and the comically outlandish stories in Bliss Montage reveal a thrumming rage and grief, the shocking truths we try to ignore.” 

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were critic, writer, and editor Adam Dalva, writer Danielle Evans, and bookseller and podcaster Miwa Messer. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty:

“There’s a glorious soul—a convergence of humor and grief, anger and love—pulsing through Morgan Talty’s indelible debut, Night of the Living Rez. The language sings and stings in these painful, powerful tragicomic stories of David, his family and his friends, and a community challenged by poverty, addiction and trauma.” 

“Talty’s ambient, hazy stories are small wonders, teeming with pain that is consistently countered by the quiet, resilient warmth coursing through this fascinatingly structured collection. Though many of the collection's characters, inhabitants of the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation, suffer from difficulties ranging from mental illness to addiction, Talty’s sense-work and insightful touch offer light in the face of despair.”

 

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Natural History by Andrea Barrett

Photo © Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were critic, writer, and editor Adam Dalva, writer Danielle Evans, and bookseller and podcaster Miwa Messer. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Natural History by Andrea Barrett:

“Andrea Barrett’s Natural History moves brilliantly through time and memory, building a complicated and compelling family tree. The stories in this collection are mesmerizing in their ability to balance illumination of the unknown or forgotten—lingering in lost histories, small moments of scientific wonder, and the private secrets of relationships—with a reverence for the unknowable, and a willingness to let stories or characters hold on to their mystery when it serves them.”

Announcing This Year's Judges for The Story Prize: Adam Dalva, Danielle Evans, and Miwa Messer

The three judges for The Story Prize have the task of choosing the winner from among the three short story collections we choose as finalists. We're pleased to announce this year's judges, Adam Dalva, Danielle Evans, and Miwa Messer.

Adam Dalva’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. He is the Senior Fiction Editor of Guernica Magazine. He also serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, is the books editor of Words Without Borders, and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University.

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections, which was a finalist for The Story Prize, and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her books have won the PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Patterson Prize for Fiction. She is the 2021 winner of The New Literary Project Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and a 2011 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her stories have been included in various magazines and anthologies, including four volumes of The Best American Short Stories. She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Miwa Messer is the creator, producer, and host of Barnes & Noble’s Poured Over, a podcast for readers who pore over details, obsess over sentences and ideas and stories and characters, as well as for readers who ask a lot of questions, just like her, a career bookseller who’s always reading.

We'll announce the three finalists in January and the winner at an event on March 15 at which the three writers chosen as finalists will read from and discuss their work. Details to come!

What the Judges Had to Say About The Story Prize Winner, Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

© Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were writer and librarian Dev Aujla, critic, writer, and librarian David Kipen, and writer Kirstin Valdez Quade. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. here's what the judges had to say:

“Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor is a linked collection of quiet stories that resound with tenderness and insight. Taylor is incredibly attuned to the slightest shift in the emotional weather in his characters and writes with absolute precision and compassion about their desires, vulnerabilities, failings, joys, and longings. His careful attention makes these very ordinary people extraordinary. His sentences are finely tuned, his language subtle and gorgeous. Filthy Animals is an unforgettable collection and an affecting portrait of a community.”

“In the first pages of the book, Lionel, one of the main characters explains his experience of showing up at a potluck with a new group of people as having ‘no way of getting inside the reference of the system.’ Brandon Taylor’s collection of short stories builds a world and provides that reference that the character in the book was seeking. 

“The writing feels like it has a familiarity with the narrative arcs of physical choreography. That it knows not only dance but how physical bodies moving throughout time can craft a story as rich as the one crafted by words. Bodies are being pushed to do things that are uncomfortable and fulfilling often in the same act. How far do we push? What boundaries do we transgress? What expectations do we choose to accept and carry ourselves and which ones do we just let go?

 “The book deals with voids that are often created from hurt, loss, or expectation and then charts characters' paths to fill or make sense of them. It is the very brokenness that is present that is the most human, that is the most true to the universal in Brandon Taylor’s writing. How does one fix this feeling—with people, with sex, on quiet walks home, with space, and sometimes with nothingness. One of the character's describes this attraction as ‘…there is something good and wounded about him.’ 

 “Brandon Taylor takes on this search, sometimes resolving itself but other times making you question, turn away, and immediately turn back to the page and continue. He uses the stories to challenge and to push deeper through different perspectives, different lives so that when you put down the book and walk into the world you feel like you can see through people’s full selves. You see, as if for the first time, people’s needs unfulfilled, moments of brokenness, and their actions and lives simply as a way of putting it all back together.” 

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Let Me Think by J. Robert Lennon

© Beowulf Sheehan

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were writer and librarian Dev Aujla, critic, writer, and librarian David Kipen, and writer Kirstin Valdez Quade. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Let Me Think by J. Robert Lennon:

“In 1970, when Mr. and Mrs. Lennon brought their infant son home from a Pennsylvania hospital, it was already child abuse to name him John. Perhaps not surprisingly, John Robert Lennon grew up to become American fiction's premier measurer of the distance by which reality falls shy of perfection. He is our very own poet of the not-quite. In ‘The Museum of Near Misses,’ the umpteenth excruciatingly funny short story in Let Me Think, a narrator named J. Robert Lennon happens into a museum where the presidential election of 2016 has apparently gone a different way. There is simply no justice if this story doesn't win the 2021 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. (A real thing, by the way—but one for which, alas, recent reality is sadly ineligible.) 

“Some of the stories in Let Me Think are so brief that including them almost makes the book shorter. Nano-vignettes like the title story, which first appeared in Barrelhouse, know more about family and parenthood than any pallet-load of humorless pop-psychology sludge. Some readers will follow the recurring couple at the heart of Lennon's ‘Marriage’ stories—who bicker over, for instance, the husband's suddenly suspicious lack of exclamation points in texts to his wife—and fight the urge to sweep their house for listening devices. 

“As a critic once wrote of Lennon's hysterical, strikingly well-plotted novel The Funnies, the author is ‘fresh without reaching, funny without stooping.’ Once in a while in Let Me Think, ‘fresh’ comes perilously close to ‘experimental’—but no, wait, come back! As Lennon's namesake once wrote of a more radical sort of experiment, ‘If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow.’ It's hard to say whom Lennon might be carrying pictures of. Barthelme? Nabokov? Roseanne Barr? Someday, aspiring writers may yet carry pictures of Lennon—and not the Liverpudlian one, either.

     “In other words, please read Let Me Think.”

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were writer and librarian Dev Aujla, critic, writer, and librarian David Kipen, and writer Kirstin Valdez Quade. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge. Here's what the judges had to say about Five Tuesdays in Winter (Grove Press) by Lily King:

“Each story in Five Tuesdays in Winter has the resonance of a novel, yet each also maintains the satisfying arc of a short story. Lily King’s language is beautiful and evocative without being showy and is always at the service of the story. Her ability to create empathy for her protagonists is, in many cases, skillfully wrought through the perspective of someone reckoning—often wistfully—with past events. These retrospective views don’t necessarily capture the most transformative moment in a person’s life, but they do capture powerful and telling experiences, the kind of memories, tinged with longing, we’re drawn to frequently. 

“The last story, 'The Man at the Door,’ is a different kind of story entirely. It’s playful, inventive, funny, and at times scary—like another King, Stephen, filtered through a woman’s sensibility. But there’s also a seriousness to it. As Cyril Connolly famously stated: ‘There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.’ Easy for a man to say! Women writers live this experience. And that’s what connects ‘The Man at the Door’ to the other, tonally different stories that precede it—that sense of lives lived imperfectly, regrets and all, that Five Tuesdays in Winter so generously and consistently captures.”