The Story Prize Longlist for Story Collections Published in 2021

Writing, assembling, and publishing a short story collection takes years of creative effort and remarkable perseverance. Every writer who published a collection in 2021 truly accomplished something significant and deserves an enormous amount of credit. Last year, The Story Prize received as entries 119 books published by 90 publishers or imprints. We choose the shortlist of three finalists first, then release our longlist a few weeks later. The three finalists, The Story Prize Spotlight Award winner, and the longlist combined highlight 20 books. Here then is our longlist of 16 outstanding short story collections (links are to Bookshop):

You Never Get It Back by Cara Blue Adams (University of Iowa Press)

The Ghost Variations by Kevin Brockmeier (Pantheon)

Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen (Mariner)

Skinship by Yoon Choi (Alfred A. Knopf)

Gordo by Jaime Cortez (Black Cat)

Life Among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks (Little, Brown)

Love Like Water, Love Like Fire by Mikhail Iossel (Bellevue Literary Press)

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Henry Holt)

The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco Press)

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz (Grove Press)

The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (One World)

King of the Animals by Josh Russell (Louisiana State University Press)

American Estrangement by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (W.W. Norton)

Are You Enjoying? by Mira Sethi (Alfred A. Knopf)

Attrib. by Eley Williams (Anchor Books)

Monster in the Middle by Tiphanie Yanique (Riverhead Books)

We've posted a Bookshop list of all the story collections that we received as entries in 2021. It was a great year for short story collections, and more than 20 other books could easily have made this list. It's always difficult to narrow the field down, and it seems to get harder every year. 

We also want to recognize several excellent books by accomplished short story writers published in 2021: The Glassy Burning, Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson, Big Dark Hole by Jeffrey Ford, The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus, The (Other) You by Joyce Carol Oates, Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri, Excuse Me While I Disappear by Joanna Scott, Look for Me and I'll Be Gone by John Edgar Wideman, and Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer. 

Two other collections published in 2021 that weren't eligible for The Story Prize are also worth noting: Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So, who sadly died before his acclaimed debut collection was published, and Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard, a remarkable hybrid that includes a mix of short stories and essays. 

We'll announce the 18th winner of The Story Prize on April 13 at a private event that we'll livestream (details to come), featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists—Lily King, J. Robert Lennon, and Brandon Taylor—followed by the announcement of the winner.

Born Into This by Adam Thompson Is the Winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award

Beyond 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 2021 is Born Into This by Adam Thompson, published by Two Dollar Radio. In these sixteen stories, Thompson examines and deconstructs the conflicts, dilemmas, and unexpected affinities that arise in the shadow of a past filled with atrocity and trauma. With a keen eye for action and conflict, Thompson tracks the lives of aboriginal and non-aboriginal characters as they negotiate the social and economic pressures of modern-day Tasmania. The legacy of oppression and genocide hangs like a dense cloud over this collection, but the stories focus just as much on the everyday aspects of the characters’ lives: silence, solitude, longing, neglect, escape, retribution, forgiveness, sacrifice, duty, and equanimity.  

Adam Thompson is a pakana writer from Launceston, Tasmania. His work has been published by the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Kill Your Darlings, and Griffith Review—as well as appearing in several anthologies. Born Into This was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards, The Age Book of the Year, and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. He was named as Tasmanian Aboriginal Artist of the Year in 2019. Adam has written for performance art and television. His episode of Little J and Big Cuz (Shelter) is in Season 3 of the series and will be broadcast in early 2022. Adam is passionate about advancing the interests of the pakana community. He has worked for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for more than 20 years.

This is the tenth time we've given out The Story Prize Spotlight Award. The nine 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, and, most recently, Inheritors by Asako Serizawa.

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

We'll announce the winner of The Story Prize on April 13 at a private event, which we'll live stream, featuring readings by and interviews with the three finalists: Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King, Let Me Think by J. Robert Lennon, and Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor. And soon we'll post a long list of short story collections published in 2021.

The 2021/22 Finalists for The Story Prize Are Lily King, J. Robert Lennon, and Brandon Taylor

The Story Prize, now in its 18th year, is pleased to honor as its finalists three outstanding short story collections chosen from 119 submissions representing 90 different publishers or imprints. They are:

Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King (Grove Press)

Let Me Think by J. Robert Lennon (Graywolf Press)  

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

 

We will announce the winner of The Story Prize on the evening of Wednesday, April 13, at a private event featuring readings by and interviews with finalists King, Lennon, and Taylor, as well as the announcement of the winner and acceptance of the $20,000 top prize and the engraved silver bowl that goes with it. 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 a video the next day. 

Story Prize Founder Julie Lindsey and Director Larry Dark selected the finalists. Three independent judges will determine the winner:

• Writer and librarian Dev Aujla,
• Critic, writer, and librarian David Kipen, and
• Author Kirstin Valdez Quade

In the weeks ahead, we'll announce this year's winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award. We'll also publish a long list of other exceptional collections we read last year and information on how to watch the event.

Announcing This Year's Judges for The Story Prize: Dev Aujla, David Kipen, and Kirstin Valdez Quade

In alternating years, one of the three judges for The Story Prize is either a bookseller or a librarian. For story collections published in 2021, we’re featuring two judges who have each established and operate libraries with innovative approaches—alongside a writer of a celebrated short story collection and novel.

Dev Aujla runs the Sorted Library, a small independent reading space in New York. He is the coauthor of Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money & Community in a Changing World. His most recent book is called 50 Ways to Get a Job: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Work on Your Terms.

David Kipen is a former National Endowment for the Arts Director of Literature and San Francisco Chronicle book critic. He teaches writing at UCLA, contributes as Critic-at-Large for the L.A. Times, and is the founder of the 11-year-old Libros Schmibros Lending Library in Boyle Heights. He is also the author of Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542-2018 and is currently collecting material for the sequel, Dear California: The State in Diaries and Letters.

(Photo by Holly Andres, ©2020) Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of The Five Wounds, which is shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her story collection, Night at the Fiestas, won the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation, and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The New York Times. She is an assistant professor at Princeton.

Video of The Story Prize Event: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Danielle Evans, and Deesha Philyaw (winner)

Because of the pandemic, this year's Story Prize event was prerecorded and posted on YouTube on March 10, 2021. We hope and expect to hold a live event in 2022. Here's the video featuring the three finalists—Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Danielle Evans, and winner Deesha Philyaw—reading from and discussing their work:

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.