The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2013

An unnerving story of grief and high-school sex has won the world's most valuable short story prize.

The American author Junot Díaz was presented with a cheque for £30,000 by novelist and prize judge Joanna Trollope at a ceremony last night at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival for 'Miss Lora', a tale set in 1980s New Jersey. Andrew O'Hagan, novelist and prize judge, said that the story 'has the feel of a contemporary classic' and that it 'echoes in the heart as well as the mind.'

Junot Díaz - a 2012 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, or 'Genius Grant' - becomes the fourth winner of the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. He saw off competition from a shortlist that included Booker shortlistees Sarah Hall and Ali Smith, and Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. They - and fellow shortlisted authors Toby Litt and Cynan Jones - each received £1,000. Junot Díaz joins a winners' circle of Kevin Barry, who won the Award last year with his story 'Beer Trip to Llandudno', American Anthony Doerr, who won in 2011 for his story 'The Deep', and New Zealander C K Stead, who won the inaugural Award in 2010 with 'Last Season's Man'.

Junot talks to our web editor, Nikesh about the story

Junot Díaz on 'Miss Lora'

So many of the young men I grew up with had, during their adolescences, these difficult-to-categorize sexual relationships with older women. What's unnerving is that because we think of adolescent boys - especially teenagers of colour - as already hypersexualised, we tend not to consider these kinds of relationships as criminal and abusive as we do similar relationships that involve teenage girls. I wanted to jump right into the middle of the awful ambivalence. And I also wanted to do justice to that mid-1980s atmosphere of apocalyptic dread that I grew up in. So many of my students and younger nephews have no idea how fearsomely apocalyptic that period was, how the shadow of nuclear annihilation was over all of us. I guess this is one of those sex and the apocalypse stories, my very own, New Jersey, Mon Amour.

Andrew O'Hagan:

Written in the energetic, high-toned Spanglish that is characteristic of his early short stories, the story caught the judges' attention with its precise, unflinching prose, and with its brilliant evocation of an immigrant world struggling with modernity. Diaz is a short story writer who gives everything its due - no words are wasted and his characters harbour both a sense of dignity and a wealth of surprise. "I, as a writer, find myself trying as best as I can," Diaz once said, "to describe not only the micro-culture that I grew up in, but some of what that leads to." In 'Miss Lora' he offers a vivid world of light and darkness; it is a work that echoes in the heart as well as the mind.

The 2013 judges are award-winning novelists Andrew O'Hagan, Lionel Shriver, Joanna Trollope and Sarah Waters. Completing the line-up are Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, and Lord Matthew Evans, Chairman of EFG Private Bank (non-voting Chair of Judges).

Junot Díaz is the author of Drown (1997) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. His most recent publication (in which 'Miss Lora' appears) is This Is How You Lose Her (2012), a collection of linked narratives about love told through the lives of New Jersey Dominicans, as they struggle to find a point where their two worlds meet.He is the recipient of a PEN/Malamud Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Born in Santo Domingo, Díaz is also a professor at MIT.

Readers savoured all six shortlisted stories at two special events at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on March 20 and 21 - produced in conjunction with WordTheatre. These featured readings by a stellar line-up of acting talent including Helen McCrory, Jonathan Pryce and Olivia Williams.

 Caroline Adderson 'Erection Man'

"First Matty. Then Matt-a-tat-tat. Which became Machine Gun Matt.  Machine Gun Mutt. Doggy. Dogbone. Boner. Erection Man, or just E.M. Then, for some reason, Dr. Dog. Dr. Love. Loverboy."

"Loverboy?" Nicole said, still staring straight ahead."Really?"

This is the story of a young man trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, who is also in the midst of an affair with an older woman. As he returns to his family home for Christmas, in a frigid Alberta suburb, he is tormented by tensions within his family, especially those between his sister and partner. This is a story of entrapment and obligation in people's lives, by family, circumstance or jobs: and ultimately through the choices they make.

Bio: Caroline Adderson is the Canadian author of three novels: The Sky is Falling (2010), Sitting Practice (2003) and A History of Forgetting (2001).  Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies worldwide and are collected in Bad Imaginings (1993) and Pleased to Meet You (2006). She has won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize twice (2004, 1994), won three CBC Literary Awards (2005, 1991, 1988) and was the 2006 recipient of the Marian Engle Award for mid-career achievement. Her numerous prize nominations include the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers' Prizes (2011, 1994), the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist, the 2003 Roger's Trust Fiction Prize and the 1993 Governor General's Literary Award.  She lives in Vancouver, Canada where she teaches part

time at Simon Fraser University.

Junot Díaz 'Miss Lora'

'Years later you would wonder if it hadn't been for your brother would you have done it? You remember how all the other guys had hated on ­her-­how skinny she was, no culo, no titties, como un palito but your brother didn't care. I'd fuck her.'

The now-adult narrator of this story reflects upon how, reeling from the death of his brother, he sought comfort in the arms of an older woman when he was still in high school. As he recalls the decisions and circumstances that led him to fall in love - or in lust - with an entirely inappropriate object of desire, this story is a rumination on the unpredictability of first love, forbidden love and of bereavement, and the life-changing impact these can inflict.

Bio: Junot Díaz is the author of Drown (1997) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. His most recent publication is This Is How You Lose Her (2012), a collection of linked narratives about love told through the lives of New Jersey Dominicans, as they struggle to find a point where their two worlds meet.He is the recipient of a PEN/Malamud Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Born in Santo Domingo, Díaz is also a professor at MIT.

Helen Dunmore 'Spotted Dick'

'Giles.  Simon can't even remember the first time he saw him.  Giles claimed him, as if he'd lost Simon long ago and simply stepped forward to say, "This is mine, I think."'

Set at Cambridge in the early 1950s, when it was illegal to have a gay relationship, this story traces the meeting and then halting romance of two very different men: Simon and Giles. As their brief relationship falters under the imagined and real pressures of social convention, Giles is prompted to reflect upon his motivation and questions why he works so hard to conceal his instincts.

Bio: Helen Dunmore is a poet, novelist, short story and children's writer. Her award-winning novels include Zennor in Darkness (1993), winner of the McKitterick Prize and A Spell of Winter (1995), winner of the inaugural Orange Prize in 1996. Her novels have also been shortlisted for the Whitbread Fiction Prize, the Orwell Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her poetry collections have won numerous prestigious awards including the Poetry Book Society Choice and Recommendation, Cardiff International Poetry Prize, the Alice Hunt Barlett Award, the Signal Poetry Award and Bestiary (1997) was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Dunmore is a former Chair of the Society of Authors and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Adam Foulds 'Tunnelling'

'Jess was too tired for this, tired almost to the point of tears.  What was he saying, the man behind the counter with his regretful, talking face, gesticulating with thin yellow arms that poked out of a short-sleeved shirt?'

A young woman struggles to acclimatize to the culture she is living in while teaching abroad, desperate to enrich her experience and achieve a sense of belonging.  This story explores the challenges of young adulthood, and of the difficulties encountered when coping with isolation and the foreignness of the wider world.

Bio: Adam Foulds is the award winning author of The Quickening Maze (2009), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His other awards include the European Union Prize for Literature (2011), the South Bank Show Prize for Literature (2010), the Society of Authors Encore Award (2009) and the Costa Poetry Prize (2008). He was also shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award in 2009. Foulds studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia and currently teaches university. Besides writing, he also plays classical violin and practices martial arts.

Mark Haddon 'The Gun'

'Daniel stands in the funnel, a narrow path between two high brick walls that join the playground to the estate proper. On windy days, the air is forced through here then spun upwards in a vortex above the square of so-called grass between the four blocks of flats. Anything that isn't nailed down becomes airborne. Washing, litter, dust. Grown men have been knocked off their feet. A while back there was a story going round about a flying cat.'

Predominantly set in the blistering heat of the summer of 1972, this story follows what happens when two young boys - bored in the midst of their holidays - steal a gun. Determined to use the it - at first playfully as a toy and then as a weapon for defence - this examines what happens when a future is poised on the brink of many different paths.

Bio: Mark Haddon is best known for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), which won both the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage prize. It has also been adapted into a successful and critically acclaimed stage production. He has also written A Spot of Bother (2006), which was short-listed for the Costa Novel Award, and The Red House (2012). Besides being an accomplished author, Haddon is also an abstract painter and has worked as an illustrator and cartoonist.

Sarah Hall 'Evie'

'She arrived home after work, sat at the kitchen table and took a large chocolate bar out of her bag. She said nothing, not even hello. She split the foil, broke it apart, and proceeded to eat the entire thing, square after square; a look of almost sexual concentration on her face.'

A husband is alarmed and excited by a dramatic change in his wife's behavior, as she becomes greedily obsessed with hedonistic pleasures. In particular her appetite for sex sweeps him up, as he gradually loses his own inhibition and joins her in risqué situations. As they compromise a friendship, the reason behind her behavior is dramatically revealed and changes the situation entirely, leaving the reader to question his morals from the outset.

Bio: Sarah Hall is the author of Haweswater (2003), which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first novel, The Electric Michelangelo (2004) which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and The Carhullan Army (2007), which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was listed as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade by The Times. Her most recent novel, How to Paint a Dead Man (2009) won the Portico Prize for Fiction 2010 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her first collection of short stories, The Beautiful Indifference was published in 2012. It won the Portico Prize for Fiction 2012, the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and was short-listed for the Frank O'Connor Prize. Besides writing, Hall has judged prestigious literary awards such as The John Llewellyn Rhys, the David Cohen Prize for Literature, the Northern Writers Awards and several short story competitions. She lives in Norwich with her partner, who is a doctor.

Cynan Jones 'The Dig'

'The boy had not slept. He was gawky and awkward and had not grown into himself yet.'

An unhappily awkward teenager, desperate for the chance to bond with his father, joins him on an illicit trip to dig out badgers for baiting. He struggles to understand - and become a part of - the seedy, determined violence and grittiness of the activity. As the long day continues, he is intermittently torn between loyalty, a desire to fit in, and an unflinching look at the horror of the motivations and specifics of the blood sport itself. 

Bio: Cynan Jones was born in Wales in 1975. His first novel The Long Dry (2006) won a Betty Trask Award (2007) and led to Jones' nomination as the Hay Festival Scitture Giovani in 2008. The Long Dry has since been translated into Italian, Arabic and French. His work has appeared in New Welsh Review and a number of anthologies. His novel Everything I Found on the Beach was published in 2011. His most recent work, Bird, Blood, Snow was commissioned by Seren Books as part of a series that reinvents traditional Welsh tales. In addition to writing, Jones has worked as a teacher, copywriter and wine presenter, sporadically on farms and building sites and also as a tutor in a Pupil Referral Unit. He currently looks after the wine in Hand Picked, a flower and wine shop in Aberaeron. He likes to cook and to drink and to walk and preferably to combine the three.

Philomena Kearney Byrne 'Honda Fifty'

'I shove Mrs. Jennings through the garage window. She squawks like a bitch coming out of the sack, but then I hear her landing with the rest of them.'

Set in the 1950's in Ireland, this is a story of a teenage boy's rebellion against his mother and his frustration with what he views as her outdated and tedious rural habits. Mikey's desire to punish his mother is twinned with his frustration at his dependency on her, and as an outlet for this conflict he has stolen and hidden her beloved hens. This leads to his predicament throughout the story - an ongoing battle between his anger, his embarrassment, his love and his guilt. This story investigates the cultural and rural divide in Ireland at that time, the awkwardness of growing up, and the rough vulnerability of teenage boys.

Bio: Philomena Kearney Byrne won the Francis McManus prize for short fiction in June 2012. Her story, 'It's All a Cod' was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 on 18 June 2012. She is a Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Supervisor working in private practice in Co. Leitrim in Northwest Ireland. She is also on staff at the Turning Point Training Institute in Dunlaoghaire, Co Dublin and co-founded Alembi Counselling, Psychotherapy & Supervision Service. She has lived in rural Ireland with her partner since 2002 and takes great pleasure in early morning walks, painting and eeking organic vegetables out of the reluctant Leitrim soil.

Toby Litt 'Call it "The Bug" Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title'

'If my mother weren't dying of ovarian cancer, and I hadn't come home to be around my father, I might have written a story something like part of the following (Choose Your Own Adventure, please): A young woman, Ela, travels by great glass elevator to one of the geostationary spaceports encircling the toxic Earth. Ela has made contact through some minimal, slangy future form of the internet (retina-based) with Clar, an old woman.'

The narrator describes the short story that he would have written, were he not en route to visit his terminally ill mother. His story would have focused on a future where diseases can be predicted and avoided by swallowing a 'Bug': a technological breakthrough. However, newer Bugs are more effective than early models, which miss some conditions. The story would centre on a dying woman being cared for by a resentful younger woman hoping to inherit her Bug - despite its fallibility - in order to prolong her own life.

Bio: Toby Litt was featured on the 2003 Granta list of Best of Young British Novelist and his story 'The Sandy' was longlisted for last year's Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. He is a regular on Radio 3's The Verb and has published two collections of stories and nine novels including Corpsing (2000), deadkidsongs (2001), I play the drums in a band called okay (2009) and King Death (2010). His story 'John and John' won the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2009. Recently his projects have had a musical bent: he collaborated with the Belgian band True Bypass and wrote the lyrics to their new album Toby and he is currently working with English composer Emily Hall on a requiem and Canadian composer Sandy Moussa on an opera. He also teaches at Birkbeck college.

Belinda McKeon 'Eyes On Me, Eyes On You'

'In a quiet moment, of which there are precious few, Brendan takes care to speak out of the side of his mouth.'

Annie and Brendan, Irish emigrants living in New York, are still new enough to be hyper aware of the differences between their new and old homeland. During a lunch with friends, Annie tells a ghost story, which is so successfully received that it compels her to divulge a further, more personal tale. While it enraptures her friends, Brendan is acutely embarrassed. Eyes on Me, Eyes on You weaves cultural and personal identity with storytelling.  

Bio: Born in Co Longford in the Irish midlands and educated at Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and at Columbia University, Belinda McKeon's debut novel Solace was published in 2011 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was voted Irish Book of the Year at the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the James Tait Memorial and Kerry Group Awards.  She has written for the Irish Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and elsewhere.  Her plays have been produced at Dublin's Project Theatre, at PS 122 and 59E59 in New York and she is under commission to the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Barnard College, and her second novel is due for publication in 2014. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband.

Mark McNay 'Ten Years Too Late'

'Two men, dressed in black uniforms, leaned against a kiosk. They didn't look like the police that walked the streets of Glasgow. They were more like the ones you see in the movies. They wore body armour, pistols on their hips, and rifles hung across their chests. Their faces were red, like they were angry enough to hurt anybody who dared break the laws of Ulster.'

Teenagers from Glasgow visit their Irish cousins in Belfast and are immediately involved in trouble, as their cousins emerge as loyalist supporters with a predominant interest in inciting violence and unrest. The youngest cousin - the narrator of this story - struggles to make sense of the motivations of those around him and the characters he meets amid a seemingly mindless and unsettling series of events and actions.

Bio: Mark McNay was brought up in a mining village in central Scotland. He read English Literature at the University of East Anglia and went on to take the MA in Creative Writing. He is the author of two novels, both of which were published by Canongate. Fresh (2008) won the Arts Foundation New Fiction award in 2007 as well as the Saltire First Book award. Under Control was shortlisted for the Aye Write award in 2009. His third novel, 'Stony Cross' is looking for a home. Mark lives in Norwich with his wife and son where he works with prolific offenders.

C D Rose 'Arkady Who Couldn't See And Artem Who Couldn't Hear'

'Some years ago, attempting to collect material for a still-unwritten book, I was travelling through Russia by train. The trains were long and overheated and smelled of pickles and unwashed clothes. It was often difficult to find a seat where I could read or sleep undisturbed, but on leaving a city whose name I no longer remember I found a quiet compartment with two men who were spending the long journey building a wooden house from matchsticks.'

During a much-delayed, long distance train journey across central Russia, the narrator meets twin brothers who are sharing his carriage. He soon learns that one is blind and one is deaf, but he is initially distracted by two other things: their joint effort to create an intricately detailed matchstick model of their home, and the varied and contrasting tales they tell about their life. This is a focus on the unpredictability of memory and storytelling, set against the stark and vast landscape of Russia.

Bio: C D Rose has published a trail of short stores over the last ten years, most recently 'A Publisher Surveys the Changing Literary Scene' in Unthology 3 (2012).  He also edits the online Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure, a blog project that publishes stories of writers who have achieved a certain measure of literary failure.  He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is currently working on a PhD in story, which will explore mixing history, essay, memoir and fiction to push the boundaries of the short story form, at Edge Hill University.  Rose has lived in half a dozen different countries and works as a language teacher and translator.  He lives in Norwich and makes bread.

Ali Smith 'The Beholder'

'I had been having difficulty breathing so I went to the doctor.  He couldn't find anything wrong.'

Weighed down by divorce, bereavement, recession and redundancy, the narrator of this story is understandably diagnosed with depression. But soon other symptoms appear that can't be explained: most of all, a thorny patch in the chest, which spreads at an alarming rate. It pricks the fingers of investigating doctors and baffles everyone who sees it. But as it grows and its shoots unfurl, it gives the patient an unexpectedly refreshing view on life during a dark hour…

Bio: Ali Smith was born in Inverness, studied at Aberdeen and Cambridge Universities and lives in Cambridge.  She's been writing novels, stories, plays and occasional journalism since 1995.  Her most recent books are Artful (2012), a work of melded fiction and essay based on a series of talks she gave at St Anne's Oxford in 2012 as Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of Comparative European Literature, and There But For The (2011) which won the Hawthornden Prize and SMIT Best Scottish Fiction Award.

Graham Swift 'I Live Alone'

'There was a moment, as Doctor Grant spoke, when he didn't see Grant's face at all. He saw Anne's face, streaming with salt water. He saw her wet arm held out to him, as if she herself had delivered this news. It made it strangely bearable.'

Given the devastating news that he has a terminal illness, a solicitor reflects on his life up to the point of his diagnosis and the freedom he had unwittingly enjoyed beforehand. Underlying his thoughts as he tentatively vows to carry on as normal and absorb the news is the fact that he lives alone, and the meaning and even potential hope this situation holds for him.

Bio: Graham Swift is the Man Booker Award winning author of Last Orders (1996).  His novel Waterland (1983) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Prize.  His most recent work, Wish You Were Here (2012) was the Time Out Novel of the Year in 2011.  He is also the author of Making an Elephant (2010), a book of non-fiction pieces, including poetry, with an autobiographical theme.

Claire Vaye Watkins 'Rondine Al Nido'

'She will be thirty when she walks out on a man who in the end, she'll decide, didn't love her enough, though he in fact did love her, but his love wrenched something inside him, and this caused him to hurt her.'

In an attempt to unburden her guilt and come to terms with the consequences of her actions, a woman confesses a dark secret from her past to her new lover. She reflects back to when she was in high school, and how she and her best friend - disaffected by their day to day existence and convinced they are more mature than they were - made an ill-advised trip to Las Vegas, culminating in a disastrous decision to go the hotel room of a group of older boys.

Bio: Claire Vaye Watkins was born and raised in the Mojave Desert in the South-western United States.  Her stories have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Glimmer Train and anthologies Best of the West 2011 and Best of the Southwest 2013.  Her collection Battleborn, was a finalist for the Story Prize 2013 and has been published in the UK, the US, France, Germany and the Netherlands. 

Samuel Wright 'Best Friend'

'Jay had a matchbox with a bird's foot in it. It was a big matchbox, and a big bird's foot. It had knuckles like buds, and scales, and claws. He could pull on a string that hung out of where it should have been attached to the rest of the bird, and it clenched like a monster's hand in a film.'

Jay and Bobby are friends at school and enjoy exploring the Hackney Marshes together. One day Jay injures himself in an adventure, with horrific results. This is a gothic, twisted tale of friendship and the worries of a young boy, which focuses on the confusions, physicality and imagination of childhood.

Bio: Samuel Wright is 34. He is an English teacher in North London, and has been writing short stories for two years. In that time, he has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2012 and the Aesthetica Creative Writing Competition 2012, come third in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2011, and won the Unbound Press Short Story Prize 2011 and the Writers and Artists Yearbook Prize 2011. His stories have been regular fixtures at Liar's League events in London and Leeds, and the forthcoming art book The Marshes, (Tartaruga Press), a collaboration with photographer Josh Lustig, which 'Best Friend' forms a part of, is his first publication outside prize anthologies. He is working on a novel based on ideas and characters created for this project and planning future collaborations. It's worth mentioning that the main audience for his work up to now has consisted of his wife, his eighteen-month-old son, and his cat, all of whom have been too polite to discourage him.

Judge and novelist Andrew O'Hagan said of the longlist:

The short story used to be the orphan of prose fiction - a bit unloved, a bit uncelebrated. But this year's entries for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award demonstrate just how the form has grown up to be something spectacular and super-confident. The best and brightest of the new generation, as well as hundreds of world-class established authors, are not only writing short stories but submitting their favourite ones for this competition, and the judge's work this year was not easy. The good news, however, is that we have been able to choose a brilliant longlist, representing a stunning range of styles, time periods, themes, and sensibilities.

Judge and novelist Sarah Waters said of the longlist

Reading the stories submitted for the Award this year was a tremendous treat, and the quality and range of the writing is reflected in our longlist. The stories we chose take on some meaty issues: the fragility of intimacy, the scary vulnerabilities of youth, the complexities of fidelity, loyalty and betrayal. Our first judging meeting was a lively one, and I think our shortlist meeting will be livelier still. But judging these stories - debating and arguing over them, teasing out their strengths and their weaknesses - is a wonderful opportunity to give them the critical attention they deserve.