A short story is a piece of prose fiction that can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.
The Giller Prize, is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward with the winner being presented by the previous year's winning author.
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English. He has been described as having been "considered East Africa’s leading novelist". His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright, is translated into 100 languages from around the world.
John Simmons Barth is an American writer who is best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include The Sot-Weed Factor, a satirical retelling of Maryland's colonial history, and Lost in the Funhouse, a self-referential and experimental collection of short stories. Though Barth's work has been controversial among critics and readers, he was co-recipient of the National Book Award in 1973 for his novel Chimera with John Williams for Augustus. Despite Barth's influence on postmodern literature in America, his influence and publicity have decreased since his novels were published.
Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. His early novels such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature were distinguished by their minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. Out of a total of ten novels, three are erotica: Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes.
Hitomi Kanehara is a Japanese novelist. Her novel Hebi ni piasu won the Shōsetsu Subaru Literary Prize and the Akutagawa Prize, and sold over a million copies in Japan. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide.
Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), and The Dutch House (2019). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
José Eduardo Agualusa Alves da Cunha is an Angolan journalist and writer of Portuguese and Brazilian descent. He studied agronomy and silviculture in Lisbon, Portugal. Currently he resides in the Island of Mozambique, working as a writer and journalist. He also has been working to establish a public library on the island.
Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist. His debut book was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories. He has since published a number of novels to good reviews. To Siberia (1996), set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998 and nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake (2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990 ; it won the Brage Prize for 2000. His 2008 novel Jeg forbanner tidens elv won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for 2009, with an English translation published in 2010.
Laurence Daren King is an English novelist and children's writer. His debut novel, Boxy an Star, made the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award and the ten finalists for the Booker Prize in 1999. He won the Nestlé Children's Book Prize gold medal in the 6 to 8-year-old readers category for Mouse Noses on Toast in 2006.
Chika Nina Unigwe is a Nigerian-born Igbo author who writes in English and Dutch. In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Previously based in Belgium, she now lives in the United States.
Sinan Antoon, is an Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar, and literary translator. He has been described as "one of the most acclaimed authors of the Arab world." He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
Paul Verhaeghen is a Belgian novelist, writing in his native Dutch. His novels include Lichtenberg (1996) and Omega Minor (2004). Omega Minor has been translated into German, English French, and Hungarian. The Dutch version won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prijs in 2005 and the Culture Award of the Flemish Government (2006), as well as the Award for Prose of the Joint Flemish Provinces (2007). The English translation, done by the author himself, won the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Johan Harstad is a Norwegian novelist, short story writer, playwright and graphic designer. He lives in Oslo.
The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.
Jenny Erpenbeck is a German writer and opera director, recipient of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
The Sorrow of War is a 1991 novel by the Vietnamese writer Bảo Ninh. The novel was Ninh's graduation project at the Nguyen Du Writing School in Hanoi. It tells the story of a soldier who is collecting dead bodies after the war and then begins to think about his past. The novel won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The novel was banned until 2006 by the Communist Party of Vietnam.
