Genre: Fiction

Fiction writer Claire Vaye Watkins has been named the winner of the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize. She receives the £30,000 (approximately $48,000) award for Battleborn, her debut short story collection.

The international prize is awarded annually for a book of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction or a play in English by a writer under the age of thirty.

Watkins, twenty-nine, is the second American author in a row to receive the prize, following novelist Maggie Shipstead’s win in 2012. Watkins received the award during a ceremony in Swansea, Wales, late last week. In addition to the prize money, Watkins was presented with a bronze cast of a young Dylan Thomas. The shortlist included two poets and five prose writers from around the world.

Battleborn, published by Riverhead Books in the United States and by Granta Books in the UK, addresses the myth of the American West. Watkins, who was born in California and raised in Nevada near the Death Valley, has won a number of awards for the book, including the annual Story Prize.

Chair of judges Peter Florence said, “Claire Vaye Watkins has some of Dylan Thomas’s extraordinary skill in the short story form of giving you a perfect vision of a complete world and that’s extraordinarily rare.”

The prize is yet another nod to the form of the short story, following Alice Munro’s win of the Nobel Prize last month.

Founded in 2006, the Dylan Thomas Prize celebrates the legacy of Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas, who is known for writing some of his best work in his twenties.

Poet and fiction writer Mia Couto of Mozambique has won the 2014 Neustadt Prize for Literature. The $50,000 prize is given internationally for lifetime achievement.

Couto, 58, is the first Mozambican author to be nominated for and to win the prize. His books include the novels Sleepwalking Land and The Last Flight of the Flamingo and a short story collection, Voices Made Night. His works have been published in more than twenty languages.

Italo-Ethiopian author Gabriella Ghermandi, who nominated Couto for the prize, said, “He is an author who addresses not just his country but the entire world, all human beings.”

Sponsored by the University of Oklahoma; World Literature Today, the university’s magazine of international literature and culture; and the Neustadt family, the international prize is awarded to a poet, fiction writer, or playwright. Couto was chosen by a jury of nine international authors.

Established in 1969, the award is given every two years. Previous winners include Elizabeth Bishop, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alice Munro, Octavio Paz, Orhan Pamuk, and Mo Yan.

Couto is the twenty-third laureate of the Neustadt Prize and will accept the award at the University of Oklahoma during the Fall 2014 Neustadt Festival.