2025/26 Winner & Finalists

 Winner: Other Worlds by André Alexis

André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral, Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and Lambton, Kent and Other Vistas: A Play.

Finalist: Atavists by Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet is the author of A Children’s Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten book of the Year. Her first work of short fiction, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

Finalist: Long Distance by Ayşegül Savaş

Ayşegül Savaş is the author of the novels The Anthropologists, White on White, and Walking on the Ceiling; the story collection Long Distance; and the nonfiction book The Wilderness. Her work has been translated into seven languages, and her stories appear regularly in the The New Yorker. She lives in Paris.

The Story Prize Spotlight Award: Trying to Be by John Haskell

We’re pleased to announce the 14th winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award, Trying to Be by John Haskell (FC2). This slender collection of nine stories walks the line between essays and short stories, exploring aspects both of trying and being through explorations of paintings, films, dance, and both public and private histories.

John Haskell’s other books include I Am Not Jackson Pollock, American Purgatorio, Out of My Skin, and The Complete Ballet, a fictional essay. He has been a performer and playwright, written artist catalogues, and contributed to books. His fiction and nonfiction pieces have appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s, Conjunctions, The Baffler, and The Yale Review. He is a contributing editor at BOMB and A Public Space, and has performed on the radio shows The Next Big Thing and Studio 360. His awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and several NYFA grants, and he’s taught writing and literature around the world. Trying to Be was the 2025 winner of FC2's Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize.

The 2024/25 Story Prize Judges

• Writer and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer

• Writer Ling Ma

• Librarian Stephen Sposato