Claire Vaye-Watkins Wins The Story Prize
March 22, 2013
The 2013 Story Prize was presented to Claire Vaye-Watkins for her collection of short stories Battleborn. The award’s $20,000 first prize remains the largest of any annual US book award for fiction. Judges this year were Jane Ciabattari, Yiyun Li, and Sara McNally. Finalists Dan Chaon (Stay Awake) and Junot Díaz (This Is How You Lose Her) received $5,000 each.
Claire Vaye-Watkins is the third debut author, third woman, and ninth recipient of the Story Prize. An MFA graduate of the Ohio State University, she is currently an assistant professor at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and co-director of the Mojave School, a nonprofit writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. When interviewed about Battleborn at Flavorwire.com, she said she wrote it “because …the world is a place of grit and grace and about a thousand things in between, and I wanted to write a book with all of that in it.”
Battleborn is a collection of ten stories spanning across two hundred years and linked by a focus on the American West. Vaye-Watkins has been praised for her bold narrative style and the merciless introspective nature of her characters. One of the Story Prize judges said of her work, “What an audacious voice, what a visionary mind, what understanding—ruthless yet full of tenderness—she has toward her characters and the landscape they inhabit.”
