Announcing the 2025 Judges

An author and former Random House copy chief, a past winner of The Story Prize, and a Chicago librarian will determine the winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2025..

The 2025 judges for The Story Prize are writer and copywriter Benjamin Dreyer, writer Ling Ma, and librarian Stephen Sposato.

The 21ST WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE IS
HIGHWAY THIRTEEN BY FIONA McFARLANE

As announced at a private event that was broadcast live on March 25, 2025, the winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2024 is Fiona McFarlane for Highway Thirteen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The other finalists were Ruben Reyes Jr. for There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven (Mariner Books) and Jessi Jezewska Stevens for Ghost Pains (And Other Stories). The Story Prize’s $20,000 top prize is among the largest first-prize amounts of any annual U.S. book award for fiction. As runners-up, Reyes and Stevens each received $5,000. 

Highway Thirteen, is McFarlane's fourth book of fiction and her second short story collection. The judges cited the book for the conceptual and thematic ingenuity of the collection as a whole and the precise execution of every story.

Director Larry Dark and Founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists for The Story Prize, now in its 21st year, from among 107 short story collections published in 2024, representing 82 different publishers or imprints. Three judges—writer and editor Elliott Holt, writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and bookseller Lucy Yu—determined the winner from among the three books chosen as finalists.

About The Story Prize

Past winners have been Edwidge Danticat, Patrick O'Keeffe, Mary Gordon, Jim Shepard, Tobias Wolff, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Anthony Doerr, Steven Millhauser, Claire Vaye Watkins, George Saunders, Elizabeth McCracken, Adam Johnson, Rick Bass, Elizabeth Strout, Lauren Groff, Edwidge Danticat (again), Deesha Philyaw, Brandon Taylor, Ling Ma, Ling Ma, Paul Yoon, and, most recently, Fiona McFarlane.

The final deadline for submitting 2025 books November 15. You can find a list of short story collections submitted for The Story Prize in 2025 at Bookshop.org.

The Story Prize is a $20,000 book prize awarded to the author of the short story collection named best of the year by three independent judges. 

“The Story Prize―which recognizes the best story collection to be published each year―has quickly established itself as a nifty jewel in a writer’s crown.”