The winner of The Story Prize in 2023 is Ling Ma for Bliss Montage.

Fans of Ling Ma’s Severence, rejoice: Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage: Stories, her second book, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, last night won The Story Prize, which comes with a $20,000 purse.

The judges praised Ma’s achievements in the short story collection:

Despite this blend and the often comical situations Ma’s characters find themselves in, these precise and skillful stories also reveal hard truths in a plain style that powerfully amplifies the shocks revealed.

Runner-up prizes go to Andrea Barrett’s Natural History and Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez.

You can watch the announcement here. Congratulations, Ling!