March 26, 2025, 7:20am

Fiona McFarlane has won the 21st annual Story Prize for her collection Highway Thirteen. The Story Prize’s $20,000 prize is among the largest first-prize amounts of any annual U.S. book award for fiction.The judges—writer and editor Elliott Holt, writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and bookseller Lucy Yu—had this to say about the winner:

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.

Runners up Ruben Reyes Jr. (There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven) and Jessi Jezewska Stevens (Ghost Pains) each receive a $5,000 prize.