Paul Yoon Wins Story Prize
Paul Yoon won The Story Prize for "The Hive and the Honey", earning the $20,000 top prize for short story collections published in 2023. The other finalists were Yiyun Li for "Wednesday's Child" and Bennett Sims for "Other Minds and Other Stories." This marks the 20th year of the prestigious literary award recognizing excellence in short fiction.
Paul Yoon's winning collection, "The Hive and the Honey," features seven stories that span 500 years of the Korean diaspora. The stories grapple with themes of identity, displacement, and the impact of history, with settings ranging from 17th-century Japan to modern-day London and New York. The Story Prize was founded in 2004 by Julie Lindsey with director Larry Dark to recognize the art of the short story collection. Its $20,000 top prize is among the largest for an annual U.S. book award for fiction; the two runners-up each receive $5,000. Yoon joins a distinguished list of past winners, including George Saunders, Lauren Groff, Elizabeth Strout, and two-time winner Edwidge Danticat. The winner is selected from three finalists by a panel of independent judges. The judges praised "The Hive and the Honey" for its "widely varied settings, skillful prose, profundity, and restrained but poignantly evocative tone." Finalist Yiyun Li's "Wednesday's Child" is a collection of 11 stories written over 14 years that explore grief, loss, and alienation, often focusing on mothers and caretakers. The other finalist, Bennett Sims's "Other Minds and Other Stories," contains twelve cerebral and eerie stories that delve into the paranoia and obsession of everyday horrors, from unsettling phone calls to the philosophical problem of other minds.
