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.