The Story Prize

The Story Prize
Name	The Story Prize
Awarded for	Short-story collections
Presenter	The Story Prize, Inc.
Country	United States
Year	2004

The Story Prize The Story Prize is an annual American award honoring short-story collections by contemporary authors. It recognizes excellence in short fiction alongside institutions and events that support literary culture, providing a cash award and public readings. Founded by figures in the publishing and literary nonprofit spheres, the Prize connects writers to readers, reviewers, and cultural organizations across the United States.

History

The Prize was established in 2004 by Julie Lindsey and Larry Dark with ties toNew York Public Library, Saint Mark's Bookshop, Poets & Writers, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and other cultural institutions. Early coverage linked winners to outlets such as The Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Atlantic, The Missouri Review, and Tin House while nominees appeared in festivals like Brooklyn Book Festival, Miami Book Fair, Pen America, Hay Festival, and Boston Book Festival. Over time the Prize intersected with university presses and programs at Columbia University, New York University, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Iowa, Cornell University, Brown University, Duke University, and Northwestern University, and with grants from organizations such as National Endowment for the Arts and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Eligibility and Submission Process

Eligible works are single-author collections published in the United States in English by commercial, independent, or university presses, or distributed in the U.S. by established imprints connected to houses like Vintage Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Knopf, Penguin Random House, Little, Brown and Company, Scribner, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Ecco Press, Bloomsbury, Picador, Graywolf Press, Faber and Faber, and Norton. Submissions historically have come via editors, agents, and presses including McSweeney's, Norton Anthologies, Riverhead Books, W.W. Norton, Jonathan Cape, and Bloomsbury USA. Guidelines require publication dates within a defined calendar year and documentation from publishers; similar submission protocols are used by awards such as PEN/Faulkner Award, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, Costa Book Awards, Edgar Award, and Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Selection and Judging

A rotating panel of judges—typically authors, editors, and critics—evaluates entries. Past jurors have included figures associated with The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Review of Books, London Review of Books, and The Guardian. Panels have featured writers with connections to NPR, BBC Radio 4, American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Book Critics Circle, Society of Authors, Academy of American Poets, Modern Language Association, and literary magazines such as Ploughshares, AGNI, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, The Believer, Griffith Review, and Boston Review. The judging process mirrors practices of prize juries for Man Booker International Prize, Baillie Gifford Prize, Costa Book Awards, and PEN/Hemingway Award with longlists, shortlists, and finalists announced before selecting a winner.

Winners and Finalists

Recipients and shortlisted authors have included writers who also appear in bibliographies and lists alongside George Saunders, Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Junot Díaz, Elizabeth Strout, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, Karen Russell, Lorrie Moore, Kelly Link, Maggie Nelson, Denis Johnson, Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, Annie Proulx, Tayari Jones, Eudora Welty, Joyce Carol Oates, Cormac McCarthy, Roxane Gay, George Eliot, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colm Tóibín, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, John Cheever, Patricia Highsmith, Edna O'Brien, Graham Greene, Roald Dahl, E. M. Forster, Samuel Richardson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, D. H. Lawrence, and Saki in critical comparisons and reviews. Finalists have come from independent presses and major houses and include emerging and established voices connected to MFA programs at Iowa Writers' Workshop, Michener Center for Writers, Columbia MFA, NYU Creative Writing Program, Brown MFA, and Johns Hopkins University.

Award Ceremony and Prize

The winner receives a cash award and participates in readings and events often held at venues associated with 92nd Street Y, Poets House, KGB Bar, Symphony Space, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, American Antiquarian Society, and campus auditoriums at Princeton University, Columbia University, and CUNY. The ceremony is attended by editors, agents from firms like William Morris Endeavor, CAA, ICM Partners, and representatives of presses including Pantheon Books, FSG, Ecco, and Simon & Schuster. Media coverage typically appears in outlets such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Vogue, Elle, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, and NPR.

Impact and Reception

The Prize has elevated authors into broader visibility, influencing sales tracked by Nielsen BookScan and listings on The New York Times Best Seller list, Amazon Books editorial lists, and library catalogs like Library of Congress and WorldCat. Critics from The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Guardian, and Publishers Weekly have evaluated winners in essays and profiles; winners have gone on to receive fellowships from MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, Radcliffe Institute, and appointments at universities including Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Stanford University, University of Chicago, and Rutgers University. The Prize participates in a wider ecosystem of awards and festivals that shape contemporary literary careers and readerships.

Category:American literary awards