Genre: Fiction

Choose a story that you've finished or a story by another author and use the last line of it to begin a new story, using the same characters and/or introducing new ones. 

If the finalists for the latest Story Prize are any indication, 2011 was a golden year for the short fiction form. Announced this morning, the authors up for the annual twenty-thousand-dollar award, given for a short story collection published in the previous year, are three of the country's most accomplished authors: Don DeLillo, Steven Millhauser, and Edith Pearlman.

"The idea that the short story is a beginner’s form, one that novice writers cut their teeth on before turning to the more ambitious work of writing novels, is a common misconception," reads a press release issued this morning by prize director Larry Dark. "This year’s finalists for the Story Prize show that—to the contrary—top fiction writers often remain devoted to the demanding form of the short story throughout their careers."

DeLillo, author of more than a dozen novels, is shortlisted for his first story collection, The Angel Esmeralda (Scribner), and Millhauser is nominated for We Others (Knopf), which includes works from four previous collections. Pearlman, who was honored last year for her contributions to the short story tradition with a PEN/Malamud Award, is shortlisted for Binocular Vision (Lookout Books), a finalist for last year's National Book Award. (An excerpt from Pearlman's book is here.)

The winner of the Story Prize, selected by judges Sherman Alexie, translator Breon Mitchell, and Louise Steinman of the Los Angeles Public Library, will be announced on March 21 at a ceremony at the New School University in New York City. The public is invited to attend the event, which features readings by and interviews with each of the finalists. For more information, visit the Story Prize website.

In the video below, Pearlman reads from her shortlisted collection at the National Book Award finalists' reading event.

The final seven writers up for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize, the shortlist for which is typically narrowed down to only five titles, were announced earlier today. The annual thirty-thousand-dollar prize, once awarded for an unpublished manuscript, is now given for a novel written in or translated into English and authored by a citizen of one of thirty-five eligible Asian countries and territories.

Of the shortlisted titles below, selected by judges Razia Iqbal, Chag-rae Lee, and Vikas Swarup, four were written in English. The novels by authors from China, South Korea, and Japan are translations.

The Wandering Falcon (Penguin India) by Jamil Ahmad of Pakistan
Rebirth (Penguin India) by Jahnavi Barua of India
The Sly Company of People Who Care (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Rahul Bhattacharya of India
River of Smoke (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Amitav Ghosh of India, who recently won the Blue Metropolis Literary Grand Prix
Please Look After Mom (Knopf) by Kyung-sook Shin of South Korea
Dream of Ding Village (Grove Atlantic) by Yan Lianke of China
The Lake (Melville House) by Banana Yoshimoto of Japan

“The judges were greatly impressed by the imaginative power of the stories now being written about rapidly changing life in worlds as diverse as the arid borderlands of Pakistan, the crowded cityscape of modern Seoul, and the opium factories of nineteenth century Canton," said Iqbal in a press release. "This power and diversity made it imperative for us to expand the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist beyond the usual five books.”

The winner, who will join the ranks of writers such as Bi Feiyu (Three Sisters) and Miguel Syjuco (Ilustrado), will be announced on March 15.

In the video below, Kyung-sook Shin reads from her shortlisted novel, along with a translator, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.