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 23rd winner of The Story Prize—which we'll announce at a live-streamed private event on April 7, 2027—are writer and past winner of The Story Prize Deesha Philyaw, journalist and critic Michael Schaub, and innovative Los Angeles Bookseller Josh Spencer. We'll announce the three finalists in January.
Deesha Philyaw is the author of the debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman. Her debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, The Story Prize, the LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction.
Michael Schaub is a journalist and book critic whose work has appeared in NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, The Austin Chronicle, and The Orange County Register, among other publications. He is a contributing writer to Kirkus Reviews, where he writes the magazine's Seen & Heard column, and a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, where he serves as chair of the online committee. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.
Bookseller Josh Spencer is the founder and owner (along with his wife Jenna Spencer) of The Last Bookstore in Downtown Los Angeles—California's largest new and used bookstore, at 22,000 square feet—as well as a branch of The Last Bookstore in Studio City (L.A.), Lost Books in Montrose (CA), and Skull-Face Books & Vinyl in Honolulu.
