February 10, 2021, 12:11pm
The Story Spotlight Prize, established in 2014, honors books of exceptional promise by first-time authors; collections in alternative formats; or works that demonstrate an unusual perspective on the writer’s craft. The Award comes with a cash prize of $1,000, and previous winners include Krys Lee, Ben Stroud, and Randa Jarrar.
This year, the winner is
Asako Serizawa, for her debut collection
Inheritors, a meditation on the suppressed histories of people living by the Pacific side during World War II.
Serizawa was born in Japan and grew up in Singapore, Jakarta, and Tokyo. She has received two O. Henry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. A recent fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she currently lives in Boston.
Daudi Abe
Daudi Abe is a Seattle-based professor, writer, and historian who has taught and written about culture, race, gender, education, communication, hip-hop, and sports for over 20 years. He is the author of the book
6 ‘N the Morning: West Coast Hip-Hop Music 1987-1992 & the Transformation of Mainstream Culture and
From Memphis and Mogadishu: The History of African Americans in Martin Luther King County,
Washington, 1858-2014 at www.BlackPast.org. His work has appeared in
The Stranger and
The Seattle Times, and he has appeared on national media such as MSNBC and
The Tavis Smiley Show. Abe holds an MA in human development and a PhD in education from the University of Washington. His forthcoming book is
Photograph by Sean Hemmerle
For a special holiday episode of the Writerâs Voice podcast, Rebecca Curtis reads âThe Christmas Miracle,â her story from the December 23 & 30, 2013, issue of the magazine. Curtis is the author of the story collection âTwenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Moneyâ and a winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writersâ Award for Fiction.