Video of The Story Prize event: Winner André Alexis and finalists Lydia Millet and Ayşegül Savaş

 Here's the video from the March 31, 2026, Story Prize event:

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 22nd Winner of The Story Prize is OTHER WORLDS by André Alexis!

Photo © Nathalie Scheuller

The winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2025 is André Alexis for Other Worlds (FSG Originals). The other finalists were Lydia Millet for Atavists (W.W. Norton & Company) and Ayşegül Savaş for Long Distance (Bloomsbury Publishing). 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, Millet and Savaş each received $5,000. 

Other Worlds is is Alexis’s second short story collection. Among his other publications are the five novels of his Quincunx series, published by Coach House Books in Toronto. He has also won Canada’s Giller Prize and Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell prize in fiction. 

Director Larry Dark and Founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists for The Story Prize, now in its 22nd year, from among 114 short story collections published in 2025, representing 72 different publishers or imprints. Three judges—writer and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer; writer and past Story Prize winner Ling Ma, and Chicago librarian Stephen Sposato—determined the winner from among the three books chosen as finalists.

The Story Prize Longlist for Collections Published in 2025

In 2025, The Story Prize received as entries 114 books published by 72 different publishers or imprints. Unlike most other books awards, we release our longlist after we announce our shortlist of three finalists. These sixteen books, plus the three finalists and The Story Prize Spotlight Award winner (Trying to Be by John Haskell), combine to highlight 20 short story collections. Here are the books on our longlist: 

• The Words of Dr. L. by Karen E. Bender (Counterpoint)
• Exit Zero by Marie-Helene Bertino (FSG Originals)
• Whites By Mark Doten (Graywolf Press)
• A Love Story From the End of the World by Juhea Kim (Ecco)
• Save Me Stranger by Erika Krouse (Flatiron Books)
• Guatemalan Rhapsody by Jared Lemus (Ecco)
• Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin (Soft Skull)
• Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore (Tin House)
• Open Up by Thomas Morris (The Unnamed Press)
• Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund (Astra House)
• Waiting for the Long Night Moon by Amanda Peters (Catapult)
• Stag Dance by Torrey Peters  (Random House)
• Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House)
• Small Scale Sinners by Mahreen Sohail (A Public Space)
• Portalmania by Debbie Urbanski (Simon & Schuster)
• The Pelican Child by Joy Williams (Alfred A. Knopf)

As we always say (and truly believe), anyone who writes and publishes a short story collection has overcome significant obstacles, has accomplished something noteworthy, and deserves enormous credit. As always, we received more worthwhile short story collections than we could possibly mention without making our longlist too long to be meaningful. We encourage readers to explore the full list of 2025 collections entered for The Story Prize on Bookshop.org.

We'll announce the 22nd winner of The Story Prize on March 31 at a private event featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists—André Alexis, Lydia Millet, and Ayşegül Savaş. Before then, we'll provide a link to watch the program live or online in the days that follow the announcement of the winner.

Trying to Be by John Haskell is the winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award for books published in 2025

In addition to naming three finalists each year, we also present The Story Prize Spotlight Award to a collection of exceptional merit. Selected books can be promising works by first-time authors, collections in alternative formats, or works that demonstrate an unusual perspective on the writer's craft. The award includes a prize of $1,000. 

Trying to Be by John Haskell (FC2) is the 14th winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award. Chosen from among the 114 books we received as entries in 2025, this slender collection of nine stories walks the line between the essay and the short story, exploring aspects both of trying and being through the lenses of painting, film, dance, and both public and private histories. Touchstones include painters Francis Bacon and Diego Velasquez, German radical and journalist Ulrike Meinhof, dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer, actor Danny Kaye, the author's Aunt Dot, and characters in films such as Blow-Up and Five Miles to Midnight. 

John Haskell’s other books include I Am Not Jackson Pollock, American Purgatorio, Out of My Skin, and The Complete Ballet, a fictional essay. He has been a performer and playwright, written artist catalogues, and contributed to books. His fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s, Conjunctions, The Baffler, and The Yale Review. He is a contributing editor at BOMB and A Public Space, and has performed on the radio shows The Next Big Thing and Studio 360. His awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and several NYFA grants, and he’s taught writing and literature around the world. Trying to Be was the 2025 winner of FC2's Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize.

The 13 previous winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award were: Drifting House by Krys Lee, Byzantium by Ben Stroud, Praying Drunk by Kyle Minor, Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar, Subcortical by Lee Conell, Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy, The Trojan War Museum by Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Inheritors by Asako Serizawa, Born Into This by Adam Thompson, God's Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu, The Goth House Experiment by SJ Sindu, and, most recently, The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck. 

You can find links to all fourteen books, including Haskell's, on Bookshop, in the list Winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award. And you can also find Trying to Be on the list The Story Prize: 2025 collections received.

We'll announce the winner of The Story Prize on March 31 at a private event, which we'll live stream, featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists: Other Worlds by André Alexis, Atavists by Lydia Millet, and Other Worlds by Ayşegül Savaş. And soon we'll post a long list of additional short story collections published in 2025.

The 2024/25 Story Prize Finalists Are André Alexis, Lydia Millet, and Ayşegül Savaş

The Story Prize, now in its 22nd year, is pleased to honor as its finalists three outstanding short story collections chosen from 114 submissions representing 72 different publishers or imprints. 

• Other Worlds by André Alexis (FSG Originals)
• Atavists by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton)
• Long Distance by Ayşegül Savaş (Bloomsbury)

Other Worlds employs fanciful and formally inventive narratives to deftly explore issues of culture, race, sex, and class. Atavists charts a constellation of characters in a Los Angeles-area town, delineating contemporary anxieties, ambitions, and mores with a cool but sympathetic eye. The elegant stories in Long Distance—set in locales such as Paris, Rome, Istanbul, and Marseilles—subtly and poignantly depict the inner lives of characters struggling with displacement despite having chosen it.

We'll announce the winner of The Story Prize on the evening of Tuesday, March 31, at a private event featuring readings by and interviews with finalists Alexis, Millet, and Savaş. The winner will receive the top prize of $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl. The runners-up will each receive $5,000. We will live-stream the event starting at 7:30 p.m. and will post a link before then and the final 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 copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer;
• Writer and past Story Prize winner Ling Ma; and
• Librarian Stephen Sposato.

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 2025 on Bookshop.org. 

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.  

Video of The Story Prize Event: winner Fiona McFarlane and finalists Ruben Reyes Jr. and Jessi Jezewska Stevens

Here's the video of The Story Prize event held on March 25, 2025. Apologies to those who attempted to watch the live stream. Technical difficulties at the venue caused insurmountable problems.

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.

Live-Stream The Story Prize event on March 25 at 7:30 p.m.

The Story Prize event is just a week away. Although we're having a private award night this year, you can watch it live on YouTube. 

What you'll see and hear is the three finalists for The Story Prize for books published in 2024—Fiona McFarlane for Highway Thirteen (Farra, Straus and Giroux), Ruben Reyes Jr. for There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven (Mariner Books), and Jessi Jezewska Stevens for Ghost Pains (And Other Stories)—read from and discuss their short story collections before we announce the 21st winner of The Story Prize and present that writer with an engraved silver bowl and the top prize of $20,000. The other two finalists will each take home $5,000.

Finalists: Fiona McFarlane, Ruben Reyes Jr., Jessi Jezewska Stevens

If you miss the live-stream, you'll still be able to watch the video on our website and on YouTube in the days that follow. You can find videos of past events under the WINNERS menu on our home page or on YouTube.

The Story Prize Longlist for Story Collections Published in 2024

At The Story Prize we release a longlist of notable short story collections published in the previous year a few weeks after we announce our shortlist of three finalists. That list of 16 books, plus the three finalists and The Story Prize Spotlight Award winner (The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck), combine to highlight 20 short story collections. In 2024, The Story Prize received as entries 107 books published by 82 different publishers or imprints. Here are the books on our longlist: 

        •  Ghostroots by 'Pemi Aguda (W.W. Norton & Company) 
        •  How to Get Along Without Me by Kate Axelrod (Clash Books) 
        •  Ricky by Whitney Collins (Sarabande Books)
        •  Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)
        •  Bugsy by Rafael Frumkin (Simon & Schuster)
        •  The Best That You Can You Do by Amina Gautier (Soft Skull)
        •  The Body Farm by Abby Geni (Counterpoint Press)
        •  Practice for Becoming a Ghost by Patrick Thomas Henry (Susquehanna
        Univ. Press)
        •  The Goodbye Process by Mary Jones (Zibby Books)
        •  How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix (The Overlook Press)
        •  Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima (Tor)
        •  Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by Genarose Nethercott (Vintage Books)
        •  How to Make Your Mother Cry by Sejal Shah (West Virginia Univ. Press)
        •  Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte (William Morrow)
        •  Mystery Lights by Lena Valencia (Tin House)
        •  Beautiful Days by Zach Williams (Doubleday)

Altogether, we received more worthwhile books than we could possibly mention without making our longlist a too-long-list, and it was difficult to narrow down the choices. It takes us a while to accomplish this because we do a fair amount of rereading. As always, we believe that anyone who writes and publishes a short story collection has overcome difficult obstacles, has accomplished something significant, and deserves enormous credit.  

We'll announce the 21st winner of The Story Prize on March 25 at a private event featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists—Fiona McFarlane, Ruben ReyesJr., and Jessi Jezewska Stevens. Before then, we'll provide a link to watch the program live or online in the days that follow the announcement of the winner.

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck Is The Story Prize Spotlight Award Winner

In addition to naming three finalists each year, we also present The Story Prize Spotlight Award to a collection of exceptional merit. Selected books can be promising works by first-time authors, collections in alternative formats, or works that demonstrate an unusual perspective on the writer's craft. The award includes a prize of $1,000. 

We're pleased to announce that the winner for books published in 2024 is The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck, published by Viking. These twelve inventive stories, perfectly executed, stood out from the pack. Shattuck takes an original approach to connecting the stories—all set in New England and ranging in time from 1796 to the present—ordering them according to a traditional eighteenth-century rhyme scheme, with the first and last stories framing five other matched pairs and the collection as a whole.

Ben Shattuck is the author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, which was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New England Indie Bestseller, and was nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793. He is also the director and founder of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency.

© Andreas Burgess

 This is the 13th time we've given out The Story Prize Spotlight Award. The 12 previous winners were: Drifting House by Krys Lee, Byzantium by Ben Stroud, Praying Drunk by Kyle Minor, Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar, Subcortical by Lee Conell, Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy, The Trojan War Museum by Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Inheritors by Asako Serizawaand, Born Into This by Adam Thompson, God's Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu and, most recently, The Goth House Experiment by SJ Sindu. 

You can find links to all thirteen books, including Shattuck's, on Bookshop, in the list Winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award.

We'll announce the winner of The Story Prize on March 25 at a private event, which we'll live stream, featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists: Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr., and Ghost Pains by Jessi Jezewska Stevens. And soon we'll post a long list of short story collections published in 2024.

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. 

Video of The Story Prize Event: Yiyun Li, Bennett Sims, and Paul Yoon (winner)—plus 20th Anniversary Highlights

Here's the edited video of The Story Prize event held on March 26, 2024. It begins with highlights from the first 19 years of the award.

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.”