Short Story No Longer Gets Short Shrift

The three finalists for The Story Prize, a new, annual literary award created to recognize outstanding short story collections, were recently announced: Edwidge Danticat (The Dew Breaker, Knopf); Cathy Day (The Circus in Winter, Harcourt); and Joan Silber (Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, Norton). Established this year, the award carries a $20,000 first prize and is underwritten by The Chisholm Foundation, based in Laurel, Mississippi. Among the three judges charged with selecting this year's winner is bookseller Ann Christophersen of Chicago's Women & Children First.

The idea for the prize was developed by Julie Lindsey and Larry Dark, who was series editor for the annual Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards from 1997 to 2002 and who has also edited four other anthologies of short fiction.

Dark told BTW, "Our feeling was that the short story collection was getting lost in the shuffle of major book prizes. If you look at the last 10 to 20 years of the Pulitzer, PEN/Faulkner, and National Book Awards (NBA), you'll find that it's rare that a short story collection is a winner, often they're not even finalists," although he did note the exception of the short story collections that were 2004 NBA finalists.

The goals of the prize are to "energize books of short fiction and bring more attention to them so readers will be more aware of short fiction and will buy it," said Dark. To be eligible, a short story collection must be by a living author and must be published in English.

Another way, Dark said, the Story Prize differs from some other major book prizes is that it wouldn't rely primarily on writers to select the winner. "Writers are not the only serious readers of fiction," Dark noted. "There are critics, editors, general readers, librarians, booksellers...."

Dark was particularly interested in inviting an independent bookseller to judge this year's finalists. "Independent booksellers are, by their nature, book enthusiasts," he said. "They handsell books they care about, not just what is being touted by publishing houses and reviewers. Almost every good independent bookstore I've ever been in has a table with staff favorites that reflects the personal tastes of the people who run the store and a real love of reading." He added, "We were fortunate to get someone of the caliber of Ann Christophersen from Women & Children First. She's superqualified to judge. She's very active in the literary community."

The enthusiasm was mutual. Christophersen told BTW, "I'm really excited to be reading the work of all three finalists carefully and coming up with the ... winner. I'm excited to be part of this great new prize because short stories are actually my favorite form of fiction."

The other judges are author Dan Chaon (You Remind Me of Me, Ballantine) and Brigid Hughes, executive editor of The Paris Review.

The three finalists for the prize were selected by Dark and Lindsey. The prize will be presented at an awards ceremony at 8:00 p.m. on January 26, 2005, at the Symphony Space in New York City. For more information about the Story Prize visit www.thestoryprize.org.  --Karen Schechner