2017/18 Winner & Finalists

 Winner: Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is the author of Anything Is Possible and of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge, as well as the novels My Name Is Lucy Barton, The Burgess Boys, Abide with Me, and Amy and Isabelle, which won The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. Anything Is Possible was named one of the best books of the year by the The New York Times Book Review, USA Today, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Her short stories have appeared in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine.

Finalist: The King is Always Above by Daniel Alarcón

Daniel Alarcón is the author of The King Is Always Above the People, the novels At Night We Walk in Circles and Lost City Radio, as well as the story collection War by Candlelight and the graphic novel City of Clowns. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, n+1, and Harper's, and he was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” fiction writers. He is Executive Producer of “Radio Ambulante,” distributed by NPR, and is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York.

Finalist: Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of the story collection Homesick for Another World. Her novel Eileenwon the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Granta, and have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Discovery Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award.

The Story Prize Spotlight Award: Subcortical by Lee Conell

Lee Conell’s Subcortical, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. In addition to naming three finalists each January, we also award The Story Prize Spotlight Award to a short story collection of exceptional merit. Winners of The Story Prize Spotlight Award 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 2017/18 Story Prize Judges

• Author Susan Minot.
• Critic and Author Walton Muyumba. 
• Library Journal Associate Editor Stephanie Sendaula.