EBJhumpa Lahiri has won the Frank O’Connor award, the world’s richest award for a short story collection, for Unaccustomed Earth. In an unusual move, the judges declined to name a shortlist and just went straight from the longlist to naming her the winner. According to the Guardian, the award’s director, Pat Cotter, said that “no other title was a serious contender.” If I were on that longlist (which includes Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Jim Shepard, and Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff, which has been on my own to-be-read list for a while), I might feel a little insulted.
Then again, the point of the award is to call attention to short story collections, and this move has certainly done that. I’m a huge fan of short stories, and I don’t think they get nearly enough attention. One of my favorites is Harper Perennial’s own Twenty Grand, which you can check out below.
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