Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Story Prize Judges, Part III: Hannah Tinti

This is the third in a series of three posts, each focusing on one of our judges this year for The Story Prize.

In 2002, Hannah Tinti and Maribeth Batcha took an interesting and somewhat risky proposition and turned it into a successful literary journal, One Story. As the name suggests, each issue includes one and only one story. And every three months a simple pamphlet that's easy to slip into a pocket arrives in subscribers' mailboxes.

Tinti actively edits each story that appears, and the Brooklyn-based magazine has a reading series and a Web site featuring author interviews. Among the authors published over the course of 109 issues are: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Arthur Bradford, Judy Budnitz, Ron Carlson, John Hodgman, Owen King, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Kelly Link, Roxanna Robinson, Dani Shapiro, Scott Snyder, Jean Thompson, and Kate Walbert.

Beyond the success and admiration she has earned through her work as editor of One Story, Hannah Tinti is also an accomplished author in her own right. She published a collection of short stories, Animal Crackers, in 2004, and most recently a novel, The Good Thief. Her accomplishments as a writer and her devotion to the short story, make Hannah an ideal judge for The Story Prize.

Addendum: Ron Hogan has a post on Hannah in GalleyCat, as does Maude Newton. Both have lots of links to other interviews and reviews.