The Iowa Short Fiction Award is an annual award given for a first collection of short fiction. It has been described as "a respected prize" by the Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times considered it "among the most prestigious literary prizes America offers."[1][2]
The award was founded by the University of Iowa Press in 1969, and has been continuously presented to a writer of short stories each year since. In 1988, a companion award called the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, named for the original director of the University of Iowa Press, was instituted. Both the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the John Simmons Short Fiction Award are juried through the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and winning books are published by the University of Iowa Press.
Select stories from winning entries are included in The Iowa Award: The Best Stories from Twenty Years and The Iowa Award: The Best Stories, 1991-2000, with selections by American author Frank Conroy.
- ^ "The Iowa Award: The Best Stories". Scholar Works. 2002. Retrieved 2022-06-27.
- ^ Bannon, Barbara (April 19, 1987). "In Short: Fiction". The New York Times. Retrieved 2022-06-27.