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 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”

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.”

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.”

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.”

What the Judges Had to Say About The Story Prize Winner, Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were critic and writer Ismail Muhammad, Margot Sage-EL of Watchung Booksellers, and writer and Williams College professor Karen Shepard. 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 what the judges had to say about The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw:

“I haven’t read stories as startlingly intimate, as brazen, as the ones in Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies in a very long time. Told from the perspectives of multiple generations of Black women and girls who speak like they don’t know the world would rather they keep quiet, the stories in this collection ask us to consider Black women’s desires rather than their oppressions, fears, or anxieties. The result is a series of astonishing characters whose voices I will not easily forget: Caroletta, a lovesick woman who wants her sometimes friend, sometimes lover to admit the necessity of their attraction to one another; Jael, a teenage girl struggling with both her mother’s death and a burgeoning interest in the preacher’s wife; and a young girl who mistakes her emotionally distant mother’s lover for God himself. In these stories, Philyaw gives characters whose desire—not just for sex, but for supportive, nurturing relationships with one another, and even themselves—take us into psychic spaces fiction too rarely invites us into these days. This book is a marvel.”

“Deesha Philyaw's debut collection of stories about Southern Black women struggling to find their place, and their true voice, within the constraints of the church or their circumscribed society, are emotionally powerful. Philyaw's writing is stunning. Each turn of phrase takes your breath away. Her characters range from young women coming of age to middle age women reclaiming their power and discovering their sexuality. This collection was a total joy to read. This is what readers dream of—discovering a new voice; writing that just steals you away into someone else's world.”

Watch a video that includes a reading by and conversation with Deesha Philyaw and the other two finalists for The Story Prize, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum and Danielle Evans.

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were critic and writer Ismail Muhammad, Margot Sage-EL of Watchung Booksellers, and writer and Williams College professor Karen Shepard. 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 is what the judges had to say about The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans:

“The brilliant and original title novella is the showstopper in this collection, but the other six stories are gems, as well. I marvel at Evans’ ability to take on serious subjects—such as grief, gender, race, and the distorting lens of history—while at the same time writing thoroughly absorbing and entertaining narratives. Her technical skills, both on the sentence and story level, are impressive. Evans seems able to draw upon a range of narrative approaches, finding what’s exactly right for every story. What’s most uncanny is that these stories, though written over several years, feel completely of the present moment.” 

Watch a video that includes a reading by and conversation with Danielle Evans and the other two finalists for The Story Prize, including winner Deesha Philyaw.

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Likes by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were critic and writer Ismail Muhammad, Margot Sage-EL of Watchung Booksellers, and writer and Williams College professor Karen Shepard. 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 what the judges had to say about Likes by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum:

“These stories take on the biggest issues of utterly realistic worlds—parents and children, race and class in America, marriage, the paralyzing nature of anxiety, victims and perpetrators—without ever forgetting that they are fiction, meant to prioritize the possibilities of language and story. Bynum envelops us in story-worlds where the ordinary is rendered unfamiliar, disorienting us in the most useful ways. The banal becomes remarkable, the fantastic an ordinary part of our daily lives. It’s as if a tiny hole has been ripped in the fabric of our world, and through it, we spy not just our doomed and flawed selves, but also how extraordinary and heartbreaking and worth saving we are.”  

Watch a video that includes a reading by and conversation with Sarah Shun-lien Bynum and the other two finalists for The Story Prize, including winner Deesha Philyaw.

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About This Year's Winner, Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat

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 writer and librarian Kristen Arnett, publisher Andy Hunter, and writer Tiphanie Yanique. 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 what the judges had to say about Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat:

“The stories contained in Everything Inside are powerfully written. They are rooted in place and in family. From beginning to end, I found myself spellbound by the care taken with character. Relationships between parent and child, between neighbors and coworkers, and between created families: These bonds were so incredibly, carefully rendered. Love beginning and ending. Life beginning and ending. The way that Edwidge Danticat writes about place—specifically Miami and Haiti—left me feeling as though I were seeing something for the first time. We are all lucky such an important voice is in the world, creating such tender work.”

 “It is something to see a writer whose previous work is already canonical write a story collection with the fierce desperation and love usually seen in first books. But Danticat is not one of our regular writers, she is a harking angel. She comes to tell us that the world is new, again and again, and that stories will not lose their urgency, their necessity. These stories zoom from the globality of immigration and natural disaster, to see the human being beneath the news stories and the humanity within each tragedy. Death is a major theme of these stories, and hope does not always prevail, but there remains a belief in human dignity and the importance of acknowledging the humanity in others. This shows in Danticat's choice of words but most often in her choice of narrator—not a spurned wife, but the daughter who never knew her father; not an earthquake survivor, but his lover. Danticat is a cherished writer for lovers of fiction and this book will also be cherished by lovers of politics, sociology and well, lovers of human beings.”

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Finalist Grand Union by Zadie Smith

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 writer and librarian Kristen Arnett, publisher Andy Hunter, and writer Tiphanie Yanique. 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 Grand Union by Zadie Smith:

“In 1964, the artist Jasper Johns wrote a note to himself: ‘Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it.’ Instructions for artmaking, they resonate for story-making as well. ‘Tell a story. Do something to it. Do something else to it.’ All writers tell a story. The good ones do something to it: tell it in a way we haven’t heard before, give it a fresh truth. The great ones then do something else to it. Zadie Smith is a great one; the ‘something else’ she does to her stories is skin them with a flick of a knife, revealing everything—every muscle, nerve, twitch and throb of life. Just when you think you know where she’s leading you, she zooms out, opening up the narrative to ambiguity and multiple truths. These stories demonstrate her supreme awareness—self-awareness, yes, but also acute and wise awareness of others, and awareness of ‘the whole game, from top to bottom.’”

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Finalist Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

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 writer and librarian Kristen Arnett, publisher Andy Hunter, and writer Tiphanie Yanique. 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 what the judges had to say about Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine:

“This is a short story collection that will find its way into your dreams—often as nightmares. The women of these stories will awake you in the middle of the night—they will be a warning. Fajardo-Anstine crafts each story around major turning points in the lives of Native and Latinx women from and of Colorado. As a writer, she is able to build characters who withstand and succumb to incredible physical pain and emotional strife-—but we never feel that we must look away. She makes her characters human enough that we feel it our duty to look, to keep reading. Without being overly plot driven, the stories are page turners. Without being overly dramatic, the stories make the reader feel agony. Fajardo-Anstine achieves this by writing with restraint in her sentences but with brimming emotional and physical honesty. Women have bodies, emotions, histories—and most of all women have each other. After each story I found myself wanting to call, touch, be with my sister, friends, daughters, nieces, cousins, aunts, mothers. Another way to be with them is to say, read this book.”

What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Deborah Eisenberg's Your Duck Is My Duck

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 writer Jo Ann Beard, Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, and bookseller Veronica Santiago Liu. 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.

“I love Deborah Eisenberg and believe in her work and in her vision. The subject matter she chooses is fascinating, and worthwhile, and I approached each story with renewed interest and hope. She's smart and has lived, and understands the human psyche and the hopeful hopelessness with which we all (of a certain age) approach life.”

“The stories collected in Deborah Eisenberg’s Your Duck Is My Duck feel strange, and only when you begin to vibe with their rhythms do you realize that it is, in part, because she has somehow successfully embedded her characters into your head, so that you hear with their ears, shudder with their confusions, search for the answers they don’t have and aren’t likely to have by story’s end. While the characters’ voices ring in your ears, it is almost easy to forget that each story is framed around deep loss. These absences, coupled with the absurdities that unravel inside the minds of people, make for an unexpectedly humane whole in each unique story.”