We’re pleased to announce that John McNally selected How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, by Rachel Swearingen of Chicago, Illinois, to receive the 2018 New American Fiction Prize! Rachel’s stories have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Agni, Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. Her work has garnered several awards, including the 2015 Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction, a 2013 MacDowell Colony fellowship, a 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. Rachel will receive $1,000 and her collection, How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, will be released in 2020.
Finalists for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize included:
—Opihi Tales, by Melissa Llanes Brownlee of Takasaki, Japan
—Sex with Strangers, by Michael Lowenthal of Roslindale, MA
—All That Business with the Heart, by Keith Rosson of Portland, OR
Semifinalists for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize included:
—Semiotic Love, by Brian Whalen of Northport, AL
—Woodlen Welcomes You, by Leslie Johnson of Coventry, CT
—Comparative Seismologies, by Jacob Appel of New York, NY
—Transcendent Gardening, by Edward Falco of Blacksburg, VA
