Fiona McFarlane has won the Story Prize, given annually to an outstanding short story collection, for Highway Thirteen.
McFarlane’s book, published last August by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, follows the lives of people affected by a serial killer who terrorized an Australian town years before. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master.”
McFarlane was announced as the winner of the award at a private event on Tuesday.
“When you send a book of short stories out in the world, you’re never quite sure what will become of it, and I’m very grateful that this particular book has brought me here,” McFarlane said, accepting the prize. “Being on this shortlist alone was already an incredible honor.”
The other finalists for the award were Ruben Reyes Jr. for There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven and Jessi Jezewska Stevens for Ghost Pains. Judging this year’s prize were writers Elliott Holt and Maurice Carlos Ruffin and bookseller Lucy Yu, who said in a statement, “Fiona McFarlane writes with psychological precision and a masterful sense of suspense. Each story is artfully constructed and the way they fit together, spanning seventy-eight years, is nothing short of dazzling. Fiona McFarlane’s book is a tour de force about the stories we tell, the surprising ways our lives connect, and the ripple effects of violence.”
The Story Prize was established in 2004. Previous winners include Claire Vaye Watkins for Battleborn, Elizabeth McCracken for Thunderstruck, and Ling Ma for Bliss Montage.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
