The Story Prize Announces Finalists
The Story Prize, an annual award for a book of short fiction, has announced the finalists from the works published in 2008. The three books were chosen from 73 collections published by 56 publishers.
The finalists are:
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
This year’s judges are Daniel Menaker, Rick Simonson, and One Story’s Hannah Tinti.
The Story Prize ceremony will take place at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium in NYC at 7:30pm Wednesday, March 4. The three finalists will read selections from their work, after which Larry Dark will interview each writer on-stage. The winner will receive $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl. The two runners-up will receive $5,000.
It’s a fun event. Last year, the winner was the person who was slated to read last (and set apart in the program). I wonder if they’ll change it up this year so it’s a little less obvious and more of a surprise.
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Pei-Ling, when we set the order of readers for The Story Prize event, we don’t yet know who the winner will be. That’s true now. We’ve already decided on the order for our March 4 event, and the judges are still reading the books. We tend to go alphabetically (by last name, although this year it would be exactly the same with first names). The one year we didn’t was in 2005, when we decided Jim Harrison should go last because he would have been a tough act to follow–and he would have been. And, as it happens, the writer who goes second has won two of the three years that our award night has followed the present format.
Comment by Larry Dark, The Story Prize — January 26, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
I suppose the way the program was printed up at last year’s Story Prize ceremony, with Jim Shepard’s name sort of set apart from the other two, several of us in the audience assumed he would be the winner, but as it turns out, we must have just been really good guessers! This year, I will not be assuming anything and will look forward to being more surprised. My hunch is on Jhumpa Lahiri, though.
Comment by Pei-Ling — January 28, 2009 @ 3:27 pm