The Story Prize Announces 2012 Finalists

The finalists for the 2012 Story Prize, an annual book award given for a short story collection published during the previous year, were announced this morning. The winner, who will be chosen in March, will receive twenty thousand dollars.

The 2012 finalists are Dan Chaon for Stay Awake (Ballantine), Junot Díaz for This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead), and Claire Vaye Watkins for Battleborn (Riverhead). The collections were chosen from ninety-eight submissions, representing sixty-five different publishers.

Dan Chaon is the author of two previous books, including the collection Among the Missing (Ballantine), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Junot Díaz’s second book, the novel The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead) won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Claire Vaye Watkins has received a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and earned a spot on the National Book Foundation’s  2012 “5 Under 35” list. Battleborn is her debut collection. 

“These are all outstanding short story collections by skillful and accomplished authors, whom we're thrilled to have as finalists for The Story Prize,” wrote Director Larry Dark on the Prize blog.

The judges for this year’s prize include critic and writer Jane Ciabattari, author Yiyun Li, and bookseller Sarah McNally. The winner will be announced on March 13 at an annual award ceremony and reading at the New School in New York City.

Founded in 2004, The Story Prize is dedicated to the short story, a form often overlooked among major literary prizes. The 2011 award went to Steven Millhauser for his collection We Others (Knopf).