Deesha Phillyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies Is the 17th Winner of The Story Prize!

The winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2020 is The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press) by Deesha Philyaw. This is the first time that The Story Prize winner has been published by a small or university press, and Philyaw is only the fourth debut writer to take the prize. The others were Patrick O'Keeffe, Daniyal Mueenuddin, and Claire Vaye Watkins.

 

A video we've posted on YouTube features readings by and interviews with Philyaw and the other two finalists for books published in 2020: The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans (Riverhead Books) and Likes by Sarah Shun-lien (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

 

The Story Prize’s $20,000 top prize is among the largest first-prize amounts of any annual U.S. book award for fiction. Philyaw also received an engraved silver bowl, which The Story Prize presents to all winners. As runners-up, Evans and Bynum each received $5,000.

Director Larry Dark, and Founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists for The Story Prize, now in its 17th year, from among 121 books entered in 2020, representing 89 different publishers or imprints. Three judges—critic and author Ismail Muhammad, bookseller Margot Sage-EL of Watchung Booksellers, and writer and Williams College professor Karen Shepard—determined the winner from among the three books chosen as finalists. 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies was also a finalist for The National Book Award for fiction and is a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Los Angeles Times Book Award. In addition, the book is in development as an HBO series. 

 

Buy The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Likes, and The Office of Historical Corrections from your local bookseller or on Bookshop.

Congratulations to Deesha Philyaw, and West Virginia University Press!

Small Presses, Big Importance

Small presses, including university presses, deserve a lot of credit for supporting short fiction. Nearly half the books we receive as entries for The Story Prize come from them, and every year we read a lot of quality work outside of commercial publishing.

Some small press publishers are extensions of literary magazines, such as McSweeney's, Open City, and Tin House. Others are independent publishers, including Beacon Press, FC2, Graywolf, Milkweed Editions, Sarabande Books, and Small Beer Press. And then there are the university presses, some of which publish story collections every year as part of awards they sponsor. Among these are the University of Georgia Press (Flannery O'Conner Prize), University of Pittsburgh Press (Drue Heinz Literature Prize), and University of Iowa Press (John Simmons and Iowa Short Fiction Awards). Other university presses--including Carnegie-Mellon, LSU Press , and Ohio University/Swallow Press--simply publish a fair amount of short fiction.

Small presses often launch careers, sometimes resuscitate them, and also can sustain them. Having smaller organizations allows editors to take chances that commercial publishers most likely wouldn't. As a result, small presses publish more experimental fiction, and they can choose work primarily on the merits without necessarily having to calculate how promotable a book or author is. On the other hand, small presses don't have nearly the means to publicize work that big commercial publishers have.

In any event, here's a list of a dozen outstanding short story collections that we've read for The Story Prize:

The Smallest People Alive by Keith Banner (Carnegie Mellon)
Damned If I Do by Percival Everett (Graywolf)
The Animal Girl by John Fulton (LSU)
Human Resources by Josh Goldfaden (Tin House)
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (Small Beer Press)
Teach the Free Man by Peter Nathaniel Malae (Ohio University/Swallow Press)
Michael Martone by Michael Martone (FC2)
Mothers & Other Monsters by Maureen McHugh (Small Beer Press)
Other Electricities by Ander Monson (Sarabande Books)
Refresh Refresh by Benjamin Percy (Graywolf)
Women in the Grove by Paula W. Peterson (Beacon Press)
The First Hurt by Rachel Sherman (Open City)

A good source of information on small and university press publishers is the Council of Literary Magazines and Press (CLMP). These publishers provide vital support to the short story, so it's well worth supporting them.