2018

Joan Silber, Improvement

FINALISTS:

Hernán Diaz, In The Distance

Samantha Hunt, The Dark Dark

Achy Obejas, The Tower of the Antilles

Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

2017

Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers

FINALISTS:

Viet Dinh, After Disasters

Louise Erdrich, LaRose

Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You

Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

2016 

James Hannaham, Delicious Foods

FINALISTS:

Julie Iromuanya, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

Elizabeth Tallent, Mendocino Fire

Luis Alberto Urrea, The Water Museum

2015

Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life

FINALISTS:

Jeffery Renard Allen, Song of the Shank

Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

2014

Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

FINALISTS:

Daniel Alarcón, At Night We Walk in Circles

Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Joan Silber, Fools

Valerie Trueblood, Search Party: Stories of Rescue

2013

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club

FINALISTS:

Amelia Gray, Threats

Laird Hunt, Kind One

  1. Geronimo Johnson, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts

Thomas Mallon, Watergate

2012

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic

FINALISTS:

Russell Banks, The Lost Memory of Skin

Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories

Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance

Steven Millhauser, We Others: New and Selected Stories

2011

Deborah Eisenberg, The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

FINALISTS:

Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad

Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule

Eric Puchner, Model Home

Brad Watson, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

2010

Sherman Alexie, War Dances

FINALISTS:

Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

Lorraine López, Homicide Survivors Picnic

Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor

2009

WINNER: Joseph O’Neill, Netherland

FINALISTS:

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Ms. Hempel Chronicles 

Susan Choi, A Person of Interest 

Richard Price, Lush Life

Ron Rash, Serena

2008

WINNER: Kate Christensen, The Great Man

Annie Dillard, The Maytrees

David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk

T.M. McNally, The Gateway: Stories

Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories

2007

WINNER: Philip Roth, Everyman

Charles D’Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum

Deborah Eisenberg, Twilight of the Superheroes

Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children

2006

WINNER: E.L. Doctorow, The March

Karen Fisher, A Sudden Country

William Henry Lewis, I Got Somebody in Staunton

James Salter, Last Night

Bruce Wagner, The Chrysanthemum Place

2005

WINNER: Ha Jin, War Trash

Jerome Charyn, The Green Lantern

Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Steve Yarbrough, Prisoners of War

2004

WINNER: John Updike, The Early Stories 1953–1975

Frederick Barthelme, Elroy Nights

ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore

Tobias Wolff, Old School

2003

WINNER: Sabina Murray, The Caprices

Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination

William Kennedy, Roscoe

Victor LaValle, The Ecstatic

Gilbert Sorrentino, Little Casino

2002

WINNER: Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Karen Joy Fowler, Sister Noon

Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Claire Messud, The Hunters

Manil Suri, The Death of Vishnu

2001

WINNER: Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Millicent Dillon, Harry Gold

Denis Johnson, The Name of the World

Mona Simpson, Off Keck Road

2000

WINNER: Ha Jin, Waiting

Frederick Busch, The Night Inspector

Ken Kalfus, Pu-239 And Other Russian Fantasies

Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle

Lily Tuck, Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man

1999

WINNER: Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Brian Morton, Starting Out in the Evening

Richard Selzer, The Doctor Stories

1998

WINNER: Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home

Donald Antrim, The Hundred Brothers

Rilla Askew, The Mercy Seat

Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted To

Francisco Goldman, The Ordinary Seaman

1997

WINNER: Gina Berriault, Women in their Beds

Daniel Akst, St. Burl’s Obituary

Kathleen Cambor, The Book of Mercy

Ron Hansen, Atticus

Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother

1996

WINNER: Richard Ford, Independence Day

Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls’ Rising

William Gass, The Tunnel

Claire Messud, When the World Was Steady

A.J. Verdelle, The Good Negress

1995

WINNER: David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

Frederich Busch, The Children in the Woods

Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

Joyce Carol Oates, What I Lived For

Joanna Scott, Various Antidotes

1994

WINNER: Philip Roth, Operation Shylock

Stanley Elkin, Van Gogh’s Room at Arles

Dagoberto Gilb, The Magic of Blood

Fae Myenne Ng, Bone

Kate Wheeler, Not Where I Started From

1993

WINNER: Annie Proulx, Postcards

Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Francisco Goldman, The Long Night of White Chickens

Maureen Howard, Natural History

Sylvia Watanabe, Talking to the Dead

1992

WINNER: Don DeLillo, Mao II

Stephen Dixon, Frog

Paul Gervais, Extraordinary People

Allan Gurganus, White People

Bradford Morrow, The Almanac Branch

1991

WINNER: John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire

Paul Auster, The Music of Chance

Joanne Meschery, A Gentleman”s Guide to the Frontier

Steven Millhauser, The Barnum Museum

Joanna Scott, Arrogance

1990

WINNER: E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate

Russell Banks, Affliction

Molly Gloss, The Jump-Off Creek

Josephine Jacobsen, On the Island

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Leaving Brooklyn

1989

WINNER: James Salter, Dusk

Mary McGarry Morris, Vanished

Thomas Savage, The Corner of Rife and Pacific

Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Death of Methuselah

1988

WINNER: T. Coraghessan Boyle, World’s End

Richard Bausch, Spirits

Alice McDermott, That Night

Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm

Lawrence Thornton, Imagining Argentina

1987 

WINNER: Richard Wiley, Soldiers in Hiding

Richard Ford, The Sportswriter

Charles Johnson, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Janet Kauffman, Collaborators

Maureen Howard, Expensive Habits

1986

WINNER: Peter Taylor, The Old Forest and Other Stories

William Gaddis, Carpenter’s Gothic

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

Hugh Nissenson, The Tree of Life

Helen Norris, The Christmas Wife

Grace Paley, Later the Same Day

1985

WINNER: Tobias Wolff, The Barracks Thief

Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra

Donald Hays, The Dixie Association

David Leavitt, Family Dancing

James Purdy, On Glory’s Courses

1984

WINNER: John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday

Ron Hansen, The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

William Kennedy, Ironweed

Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River

Bernard Malamud, The Stories

Cynthia Ozick, The Cannibal Galaxy

1983

WINNER: Toby Olson, Seaview

Maureen Howard, Grace Abounding

Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.

Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

William S. Wilson, Birthplace

1982

WINNER: David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident

Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

Richard Bausch, Take Me Back

Mark Helprin, Ellis Island and Other Stories

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise

1981

WINNER: Walter Abish, How German Is It?

Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus

Walker Percy, The Second Coming

Gilbert Sorrentino, Aberration of Starlight

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces