The Best Short Stories 2025: The O. Henry Prize Winners

EDWARD P. JONES is the author of two story collections, All Aunt Hagar’s Children and Lost in the City, which was awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lannan Literary Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. His novel, The Known World, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The International Dublin Literary Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He has been awarded a McArthur Fellowship and a PEN/Malamud Award for the excellence in the art of the short story. He is a professor of English at George Washington University.

JENNY MINTON QUIGLEY is the author of a memoir, The Early Birds, and editor of the anthology Lolita in the Afterlife. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband, sons, and dogs.