2022/23 Winner & Finalists

 Winner: Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

Ling Ma is a writer hailing from Fujian, Utah, and Kansas. She is the author of the novel Severance, which received the Kirkus Prize, a Whiting Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. She lives in Chicago with her family.

Finalist: Natural History by Andrea Barrett

Andrea Barrett is the author of nine previous works of fiction, including the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever and Pulitzer Prize finalist Servants of the Map. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship, as well as a past finalist for The Story Prize and a recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Having lived in Rochester, New York, and western Massachusetts, Barrett now resides in the Adirondacks.

Finalist: Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. His first book, Night of the Living Rez, won the 2022 New England Book Award for Fiction. It has also been named a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction and Barnes & Noble Discover Award as well as A New York Times, TIME, NPR, Esquire, Oprah Daily, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022. One of Narrative’s “30 Below 30,” Talty’s work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, Granta, LitHub, and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maine, Orono and lives in Levant, Maine.

The Story Prize Spotlight Award: God’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu

The 11th winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award is God’s Children Are Little Broken Things (A Public Space Books), a collection of nine evocative and immersive stories that explore queer lives and loves amid an atmosphere of cultural intolerance. 

A Kirkus Prize finalist, Arinze Ifeakandu is the author of the debut short story collection, God's Children Are Little Broken Things (A Public Space Books), now longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently lives in Nigeria.

Beyond the three finalists The Story Prize announces each year, we honor an additional short story collection of exceptional merit with The Story Prize Spotlight Award. Winners can be promising works by first-time authors, collections in alternative formats, or works that demonstrate an unusual perspective on the writer's craft. The award comes with a prize of $1,000.

The 2022/23 Story Prize Judges

• Critic, writer, and editor Adam Dalva

• Author Danielle Evans

• Bookseller and podcaster Miwa Messer