{"id":6424,"date":"2011-09-20T15:39:37","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T19:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=6424"},"modified":"2016-07-08T15:21:24","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T19:21:24","slug":"2011-frank-oconnor-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/09\/20\/2011-frank-oconnor-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 Frank O’Connor Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t covered the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize on this blog before, but it’s high time I start — it’s a prize worth watching. Here’s a description from the prize webiste (which you can find here): “The 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize is worth \u20ac35,000 to the winning author of a collection of short stories published for the first time, in English anywhere in the world [. . .].” Collections of previously published works are not eligible, but translations are.<\/p>\n

For those who don’t know, Frank O’Connor was a master of the form. Earlier this year, Melville House published a beautiful edition of O’Connor’s study of the short story, The Lonely Voice<\/em>. I read it and loved it. I don’t agree with all he said, but it was refreshing, so refreshing, to have someone taking the form seriously, not as just\u00a0a shrunken novel or as apprentice work. I highly recommend\u00a0The Lonely Voice<\/em>\u00a0and hope someday — perhaps as part of an extended series on short stories — to review the book itself.<\/p>\n

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Anyway, the prize itself has been in existence since 2005, when Yiyun Li won with her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers<\/em> (which also won the PEN\/Hemingway Award and the Guardian First Book Award). The other five winners up to 2010 are Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri, Simon Van Booy, and Ron Rash.<\/p>\n

This year’s winner was announced last week:<\/p>\n