The Story Prize has announced its finalists for the best story collections of 2023.
The three titles are Yiyun Li’s Wednesday’s Child, Bennett Sims’ Other Minds and Other Stories, and Paul Yoon’s The Hive and the Honey. The three finalists, drawn from 113 titles submitted by 84 publishers or imprints, according to a news release, were selected by Story Prize founder Julie Lindsay and director Larry Dark.
Veteran story writer Li was previously a finalist for the prize in 2011. In its starred review of Wednesday’s Child, published last September by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Kirkuscalled the collection “a gorgeous almanac of the world of pain.”
Sims’ Other Minds and Other Stories, published by the small press Two Dollar Radio in November 2023, was praised by Kirkus for featuring “uncanny menace and philosophical speculation.…Readers who enjoy their fiction heady will find a lot to enjoy here.”
Kirkus admired Yoon’s Hive, published by Simon & Schuster imprint Marysue Rucci Books last October, for its stories that “echo with the loss, regret, and hope of migrants and nomads.”
Three judges will determine the winner: New Yorker writer, critic, and professor Merve Emre; librarian and critic Allison Escoto; and author Tania James.
The winner of the prize will be announced at a livestreamed private event on March 26. The winner receives $20,000; the two remaining finalists will each receive $5,000. Previous Story Prize winners include Edwidge Danticat, George Saunders, Lauren Groff, Brandon Taylor, and Ling Ma.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix.
