The finalists for the 2016 Story Prize have been announced. The author of the winning short story collection will receive $20,000, and the two runners-up will receive $5,000. This year, the Story Prize judges selected three finalists from a hundred submissions, representing sixty-four different publishers and imprints. The finalists are:
- Charles Baxter’s There’s Something I Want You to Do (Pantheon)
- Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles (Random House)
- Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking (Random House)
Charles Baxter is the author of five previous short story collections, and is a winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story. He has also published five novels. He lives in Minneapolis.
Colum McCann is the author of two previous short story collections, as well as six previous novels. He has won the National Book Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among others. He lives in New York City.
Adam Johnson’s story collection Fortune Smiles won the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction. His novel The Orphan Master’s Son won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the California Book Award. He lives in San Francisco.
Now in its twelfth year, the Story Prize was established in 2004 by Larry Dark and Julie Lindsey to honor collections of short fiction, and to attract more attention to the form. Each year Dark and Lindsey select the finalists, and a panel of authors select the winner. Anthony Doerr, Rita Meade, and Kathryn Schulz will be this year’s final judges. Elizabeth McCracken took last year’s prize for her collection Thunderstruck. The 2016 winner will be announced on Wednesday, March 2, at an award ceremony at the New School in New York City. Visit the Story Prize website for more information.