Paul Yoon’s The Hive and the Honey won the Story Prize, given annually to “the short story collection named best of the year by three independent judges.”
Yoon’s collection, published last October by Marysue Rucci Books, collects stories featuring characters from Korean diasporic communities. A critic for Kirkus said the stories in the book “echo with the loss, regret, and hope of migrants and nomads.”
The book beat out two other finalists for the award: Yiyun Li’s Wednesday’s Childand Bennett Sims’ Other Minds and Other Stories. The prize was judged by critic Merve Emre, librarian Allison Escoto, and novelist Tania James.
“The Hive and The Honey is a collection of astonishing breadth, offering a panoramic portrait of Korean diaspora, of lives rescued from the margins of history,” the judges said in a statement. “These characters reveal themselves most acutely through intimate gestures, moments that infuse the ordinary with lasting wonder and could only be achieved by a writer as patient, curious, and masterful as Paul Yoon.”
The Story Prize, which comes with a cash award of $20,000, was established in 2004. Past winners include Jim Shepard for Like You’d Understand, Anyway; George Saunders for Tenth of December; Deesha Philyaw for The Secret Lives of Church Ladies; and Ling Ma for Bliss Montage.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
