We are thrilled to announce the winners for this year’s American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Susan Steinberg. Thank you to everyone who submitted—it is always uplifting to read your work. Congratulations to the winners!
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First-Place Prize:
“My Beautiful Bearded Wife” by Eric Schlich
Judge Susan Steinberg writes, “‘My Beautiful Bearded Wife’ is a wonderfully written piece on the often-gendered competitions, roles, and power dynamics in a marriage; the narrator’s fragilities and identity unfold in the shadow of the unnamed wife’s new, and true, object of affection.”
Eric Schlich is the author of the story collection, Quantum Convention (University of North Texas Press), winner of the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Prize. His stories have appeared in Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Nimrod, among other journals. He holds a PhD in fiction from Florida State University and an MFA from Bowling Green State University. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor at the University of Memphis and teaches in the MFA program.
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Second-Place Prize:
“The Chimp” by Terese Svoboda
“Vivid, surreal, and beautifully lyric, ‘The Chimp,’” writes Steinberg, “explores the vulnerability of intimacy and loneliness through a powerful narrative voice, quick shifts, the subtlest of details, and a collection of minor characters who allow a glimpse into the narrator’s complex history.” “The Chimp” will be published as a fiction exclusive on our website in the coming months.
Terese Svoboda is the author of 19 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, biography, and translation, and has won a Guggenheim, the Bobst Prize for fiction, the Iowa Prize for poetry, an NEH and a PEN/Columbia grant for translation, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation prize for video, the O. Henry award for the short story, two Appleman awards, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay. She is also a three-time winner of the NY Foundation for the Arts fellowship and has been awarded Headlands, James Merrill, Hawthornden, Bogliasco, Yaddo, MacDowell, Hermitage, and Bellagio residencies. She wrote the libretto for WET, an opera that premiered at L.A.’s RedCat Theater, Disney Hall.
Susan Steinberg is the author of four books of fiction, most recently Machine and Spectacle from Graywolf Press. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s, The Gettysburg Review, Conjunctions, Zyzzyva, Bomb online, The Believer online, and other literary journals. She was awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received fellowships from several artist residencies, including Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Civitella Ranieri Center. She earned a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She teaches at the University of San Francisco and will be the 2021 Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to Susan Steinberg!
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