Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction

In these brilliant, thematically linked stories, men and women from the Midwest to the West Coast, from Germany to Japan-engineers, opera singers, waitresses, teenagers, and monks-reckon with their body's relationship to grief, illness, violation, technology, and genocide. They escape their fate in unusual ways-by befriending the squatting heroin addict next door, using a child's flute as a gun in the dark, or ordering a new pair of legs, all in a variety of rich settings. The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs is about the ways our bodies are marked by memory, often literally (burns, bruises, tracks, tattoos), and the risky decisions we make when pushed to the extreme. There's a little O'Connor, a dash of DeLillo, and a cup of Alice Munro mixed together with a great deal of compassion. Leslie Campbell's fiction debut is a must-read and sure winner.

Buzzfeed News,"15 Small Press Books To Kick Off Your 2020 Reading Season" The Millions, "February Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated" "Death looms in these four sparkling novellas-thus the book's sly title-but until then there's the wonder of life. Frank's subjects include fascinating friendships and complicated marriages, awful parties and odd enthusiasm. Bonus: song mentions that add up to a terrifically eclectic playlist." -Kim Hubbard, People Magazine In her quartet of novellas, Joan Frank invites readers into the inner lives of characters bewildered by love, grief, and inexplicable affinities. A young couple navigates a strange friendship and unexpected pregnancy; a woman recalls the bizarre fallout of her former lover's fame; a lonely widow is drawn to an arrogant young man; a wealthy spiritual seeker grapples with what wealth cannot affect. Witty and humane, Frank taps the riches of the novella form as she writes of loneliness, friendship, loss, and the filaments of intimacy that connect us through time.

Years after Caspers's unnamed narrator loses her first lover in a tragic accident, she finds herself wondering, "What did she want from me? What are the things that matter?" In vivid, richly detailed vignettes, the book tracks the cyclical nature of grief and remembrance across a life fractured by loss. At times dryly comical, at other times radiantly surreal, The Fifth Woman is a testament to the resurrecting power of memory and enduring love.

Winner of the 2021 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction "The stories in A New Race of Men from Heaven move elegantly between the ache of loneliness and the grace of connection, however fleeting." -Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections A New Race of Men from Heaven is a collection of stories about those who struggle to live in a world inherited on their own terms, of characters who may at times wander, but are never truly lost. A lonely man on a business trip finds himself in the middle of a search party for a missing boy; a grieving widow leaves India to join family in the United States; a writer finds renewed success when an unknown imposter begins publishing under his identity. In these quiet yet deeply knowing stories of power, race, despair, and migration, A New Race of Men from Heaven offers us, above all else, stories of enduring love and of hope.

In these inventive short stories, characters must navigate an impossible world: America as we know it. Two estranged brothers on a road trip attempt to reconcile but end up at a Revolutionary War reenactment camp; a young woman moves in with her boyfriend and discovers an eerily personalized seduction manual on his bookshelf; a middle-aged Korean-American father attends college courses and is either blessed or haunted by the presence of Edward Moon, an eccentric billionaire who also happens to be "the most successful Korean in America." Playfully engaging with genres like science fiction, the fairy tale, and the Gothic tale, the interconnected short stories of Impossible Children pit tiny heroes against tiny villains; the result is a stunning mapping of geography, heritage, immigration, freedom, and the mysterious forces behind epic ruins and epic successes.

Within the thirteen stories of Whitney Collins's Big Bad dwells a hunger that's dark, deep, and hilarious. Part domestic horror, part flyover gothic, Big Bad serves up real-world predicaments in unremarkable places (motels, dormitories, tiki bars), all with Collins's heart-wrenching flavor of magical realism. A young woman must give birth to future iterations of herself; a widower kills a horse en route to his grandson's circumcision; a conflicted summer camper is haunted by a glass eye and motorcycle crash. Collins's cast of characters must repeatedly choose to fight or flee the "big bad" that dwells within us all. Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and boasting a 2020 Pushcart-winning story, Big Bad simultaneously entertains and disconcerts.