The Story Prize has announced the three finalists for its 22nd annual award, celebrating the finest short story collections published in 2025. Selected from a competitive field of 114 submissions representing 72 publishers and imprints, the finalists are André Alexis for Other Worlds (FSG Originals), Lydia Millet for Atavists (W.W. Norton & Company) and Ayşegül Savaş for Long Distance (Bloomsbury Publishing).
The 2025 shortlist highlights a diverse range of narrative styles and global perspectives. Alexis explores the intersections of culture, race and class through formally inventive tales, while Millet offers a sharp yet sympathetic look at contemporary ambitions within a Los Angeles-area community. Savaş rounds out the trio with elegant stories set across Europe and Turkey, poignantly capturing the internal lives of those living in self-chosen displacement.
The winner will be selected by an esteemed panel of judges: author and copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer, previous Story Prize winner Ling Ma and librarian Stephen Sposato.
The final announcement will take place on March 31 during a private livestream event. The evening will feature readings and interviews with all three finalists before the winner is revealed. The top prize includes $20,000 and an engraved silver bowl, while the two runners-up will each receive $5,000.
A Giller Prize winner based in Canada, Alexis is renowned for his debut Childhood and the critically acclaimed Fifteen Dogs.
Millet is an Arizona-based author whose previous work, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her novel A Children’s Bible was a National Book Award finalist.
Based in Paris, Savaş is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. Her work has been translated into seven languages and includes the novels The Anthropologists and White on White.
The Story Prize continues to be one of the most prestigious honours for short fiction. Last year’s winner was Fiona McFarlane for her collection Highway Thirteen.
For those looking to enter the next cycle, the 2026 deadlines are July 1 for books published in the first half of the year, and November 15;for those published from July through December.
