Well, thank you for your generous words.

The O’Connor is only a few years old. Five years old, I believe.
There was a big stir last year when the judge skipped the shortlist altogether and gave Jhumpa Lahari the prize!

And yes, the IMPAC is amazing.
My favorite recent winner of that is OUT STEALING HORSES.
What a quietly stunning novel…

Thanks again.

My Best,
Joshua

Thanks for such an articulate and thoughtful post on Van Booy’s work. I’ll look forward to reading his short fiction.

I also admit to not having known about the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Is it new? I’ve always thought of the Story Prize as being the “big” award for the short form. Nice to know that there are other, important prizes for stories. In fact, it was a good week for the story all around, wasn’t it? Deborah Eisenberg wins a MacArthur, Uwem is chosen as the next Oprah selection…

It’s also interesting that Ireland has become the seat of such important writing prizes. The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize is, to my knowledge, the largest prize (monetarily) for fiction. This year’s winner was Michael Thomas, for his novel Man Gone Down. He received 100,000 Euros.

And while I don’t wish to take a thing away from Mr. Thomas, I’d be remiss not to mention that FWR contributor Travis Holland was also shortlisted for the award…His novel, The Archivist Story, is a book I can’t recommend highly enough.

Here’s more on the IMPAC prize:

http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/

Thanks again for the great post.