Reading List · Short stories
The Story Prize is an annual US award for a book of short fiction, honouring the best collection originally published in English in the United States in a given year. It was founded by Julie Lindsey and is directed by Larry Dark, a former series editor of the O. Henry Awards. The winner receives $20,000 and two finalists $5,000 each. Edwidge Danticat won the first award, for books of 2004, and in 2020 became the first two-time winner.
By Lisanne Swart · 22 winners since 2004 · Short story collections · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 29 October 2026
Click a title to read about it further down ↓
The winner for books published in 2025, André Alexis’s Other Worlds, was announced in New York on 31 March 2026. The prize website describes the award as in its 23rd year, lists judges for 2026/27 and gives 16 November as the final deadline for books published from July to December 2026; no source consulted mentions any plan to end the prize.
Quick answer
The Story Prize is a $20,000 US award for the year’s best short story collection, given since the books of 2004. The most recent winner, for books published in 2025, is Other Worlds by André Alexis, announced on 31 March 2026.
How this page chooses
The timeline at the top lists every winner, all 22 of them. The latest fifteen have their own entry further down, oldest first; the titles in the timeline that you can click are those.
Under each book is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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Twenty-one stories, seven of them new, gathered with selections from four earlier collections, mixing the ordinary and the fantastic: a vast underground shopping complex, automatons, an illusionist, and death and the afterlife in the title story.
Millhauser won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Martin Dressler.
Ten stories, including one in which a semi-autobiographical narrator recounts her father’s role in the Manson Family, and others on how George Spahn acquired his ranch and a bond between half-sisters.
Also won the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize.
Stories set in bleak, absurd worlds of theme parks, medical laboratories and a hard-pressed near-future America, where ordinary people struggle with sick children, ailing parents and the wish to earn a decent living.
Won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2014.
McCracken’s first story collection in twenty years: nine stories, among them a documentary filmmaker facing a subject he once betrayed, a young scholar mourning his wife, and a grocery manager fixated on a woman’s disappearance.
Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award.
Six stories, including two North Korean defectors adjusting to life in Seoul, a young man searching Louisiana after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and a former Stasi prison warden denying his past.
Also won the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction.
A gathering of 25 stories, seven of them new, rooted in rural, natural landscapes and characters’ ties to the land, with titles including “Wild Horses”, “In Ruth’s Country”, “Pagans” and “Elk”.
Bass lives in Montana’s Yaak Valley and has worked to protect it from roads and logging.
Nine linked stories centred on the fictional rural town of Amgash, Illinois, hometown of the narrator of Strout’s earlier novel, returning to people and places from that book.
A companion to Strout’s 2016 novel My Name Is Lucy Barton.
Stories that use Florida’s wildlife, weather and landscape to explore motherhood, family, ageing and the relationship between people and nature, drawn from Groff’s years living in the state.
A finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.
Edwidge Danticat’s collection moves between Miami and the Caribbean in stories that explore the meaning of community and family, fifteen years after her first Story Prize-winning book.
Danticat became the first author to win The Story Prize twice.
Nine stories, each centred on a Black woman, about church, desire and sexuality, including infidelity and lesbian relationships; the title plays on the stereotype of prim churchgoing women Philyaw grew up with.
Also won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award and was a 2020 National Book Award finalist.
Connected stories set mostly in Madison, Wisconsin, many unfolding over a single day, following Lionel, a mathematician recently out of psychiatric care, and the dancers Charles and Sophie.
Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life, was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
Eight stories, some of them surreal, that explore dating, positionality and diaspora, including “Yeti Lovemaking” and “G”, in which a drug offers an escape from reality.
Also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Seven stories of migrants, nomads and the Korean diaspora, ranging from a Canadian casino and London to Japan in 1608 and the steppes of eastern Russia in 1881.
Yoon’s earlier novel Snow Hunters won the Young Lions Fiction Award.
Twelve stories linked by a fictional Australian serial killer, Paul Biga, loosely inspired by Ivan Milat’s backpacker murders, following the people his crimes affected in settings from the 1950s to 2028.
McFarlane’s The High Places won the International Dylan Thomas Prize.
André Alexis’s third story collection, in which many stories follow Trinidadian immigrants in small-town Ontario, touching on family legacy, reincarnation, black magic and resurrection; one moves from 19th-century Trinidad to 1957.
Alexis is the first Canadian writer to win The Story Prize; his novel Fifteen Dogs won the 2015 Giller Prize.
The Story Prize considers collections published in the US during one calendar year and announces its winner early the following year. The prize website labels each round with both years, from “2004/05” for The Dew Breaker to “2025/26” for Other Worlds, and describes the latest result as the winner “for books published in 2025”.
This page uses the publication year, so 2025 means books of 2025, announced in March 2026. Some lists, including part of Wikipedia’s table, use the announcement year for recent winners instead, which can make the same book appear one year later.
Each round names three finalists, one of whom wins, and the prize site lists a panel of three judges for each year; in 2023/24 they were a critic, a librarian and a writer. The two runners-up receive $5,000 each, and the winner an engraved silver bowl as well as $20,000.
Since 2012 the Spotlight Award, worth $1,000, has gone to an additional collection of exceptional merit, such as a debut or a book in an unusual form. Recent Spotlight winners include SJ Sindu’s The Goth House Experiment, Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound and John Haskell’s Trying to Be, the 14th.
An annual US award of $20,000 for the best short story collection first published in English in the United States in a given year.
André Alexis won on 31 March 2026 for Other Worlds, the prize for books published in 2025. He is the first Canadian writer to win.
Yes. In late 2026 the prize website describes it as in its 23rd year, lists judges for 2026/27 and is accepting books published in 2026, with a 16 November deadline for July–December titles. No source consulted mentions plans to end it.
Fiona McFarlane, for Highway Thirteen, a book of twelve stories linked by a fictional Australian serial killer.
Julie Lindsey founded it; Larry Dark, a former series editor of the O. Henry Awards, is its director.
Edwidge Danticat, the first winner with The Dew Breaker (books of 2004), won again with Everything Inside (books of 2019).
A $1,000 award, given since 2012, for an additional story collection of exceptional merit chosen from all entries.
The prize covers books of one year and announces the winner the next. This page uses the publication year; the prize’s own site uses paired labels such as 2025/26.
Winner list last verified 29 October 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
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