THE 19TH WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE IS
BLISS MONTAGE BY LING MA
Photo by Beowulf Sheehan
As announced at a private event that was broadcast live, the winner of The Story Prize for books published in 2022 is Ling Ma for Bliss Montage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The other finalists were Andrea Barrett for Natural History (W.W. Norton & Company) and Morgan Talty for Night of the Living Rez (Tin House). 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, Barrett and Talty each received $5,000.
Bliss Montage, Ma’s second book, blends speculative and realistic elements in stories that at times verge on the absurd and the surreal. Despite this blend and the often comical situations Ma’s characters find themselves in, these precise and skillful stories also reveal hard truths in a plain style that powerfully amplifies the shocks revealed.
Director Larry Dark and Founder Julie Lindsey selected the three finalists for The Story Prize, now in its 19th year, from among 119 short story collections published in 2022, representing 79 different publishers or imprints. Three judges—critic, writer, and editor Adam Dalva; writer and past finalist Danielle Evans, and bookseller and podcaster Miwa Messer—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 (a second time), Deesha Philyaw, and, most recently, Brandon Taylor. Nearly all of these books are available at Bookshop.org in our list of Story Prize winners.
The deadlines for submitting 2023 books are July 15 for books published in the first half of the year and Nov. 15 for books published in the second half. You can find a list of short story collections submitted for The Story Prize in 2022 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.”
An anthology of stories by past winners of this award,
The Story Prize: 15 Years of Great Short Fiction (Catapult Books), is available wherever books are sold. Introducing the stories are excerpts from on-stage interviews with the authors
at the annual Story Prize award events.
The Story Prize Partners
The Story Prize is a Literary Hub partner
Publisher of The Story Prize anthology