The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019

Now celebrating its centenary, this prestigious annual anthology gathers the twenty best new short stories published in the previous year. An Anchor Books Original.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Colombian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

List of 2019 winners:

Tessa Hadley
John Keeble
Moira McCavana
Rachel Kondo
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Stephanie Reents
Alexia Arthurs
Valerie O’Riordan
Patricia Engel
Kenan Orhan
Sarah Hall
Bryan Washington
Isabella Hammad
Weike Wang
Caoilinn Hughes
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Liza Ward
Doua Thao
Alexander MacLeod
John Edgar Wideman

Prize Jurors 2019:  Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar

Laura Furman, series editor of The O. Henry Prize Stories since 2003, is the winner of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts for her fiction. The author of several books, including the story collection The Mother Who Stayed, she taught writing for many years at the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Central Texas.

Tessa Hadley, “Funny Little Snake” The New Yorker

John Keeble, “Synchronicity,” Harper’s Magazine

Moira McCavana, “No Spanish,” Harvard Review

Rachel Kondo, “Girl of Few Seasons,” Ploughshares Solos

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, “Julia and Sunny,” Ploughshares

Stephanie Reents, “Unstuck,” Witness

Alexia Arthurs, “Mermaid River,” The Sewanee Review

Valerie O’Riordan, “Bad Girl,” LitMag

Patricia Engel, “Aguacero,” Kenyon Review

Kenan Orhan, “Soma,” The Massachusetts Review

Sarah Hall, “Goodnight Nobody,” One Story

Bryan Washington, “610 North, 610 West,” Tin House

Isabella Hammad, “Mr. Can’aan,” The Paris Review

Weike Wang, “Omakase,” The New Yorker

Caoilinn Hughes, “Prime,” Granta.com

Souvankham Thammavongsa, “Slingshot,” Harper’s Magazine

Liza Ward, “The Shrew Tree,” Zyzzyva

Doua Thao, “Flowers for America,” Fiction

Alexander MacLeod, “Lagomorph,” Granta

John Edgar Wideman, “Maps and Ledgers,” Harper’s Magazine