Celebrating the O. Henry Prize with Amor Towles

Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, was a finalist for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness. His stories have won an O. Henry Prize and a Pushcart Prize, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories.

Arjun Gupta is a storyteller known for his diverse roles as an actor, from the brooding Penny in The Magicians to the sober nurse in Nurse Jackie, the clown in Paradise, and the grieving Arun in his self-produced short film Inheritance. His work seeks to reveal the humanity in characters often overlooked. This passion has led him to explore various forms of storytelling, including founding the Ammunition Theatre Company in LA, producing a play in NYC, and creating short films in both the US and India. He’s also developing three feature films, which he hopes to begin filming soon. Beyond acting and producing, Arjun writes children's books that use play and mindfulness to help kids navigate their emotional experience; two are currently out with publishers. In addition to his creative endeavors, Arjun serves on the board of the Stella Adler Center of the Arts. He also co-owns Fontainhas + /du.kaan/, a "third space" in Dumbo, offering the best chai, great minimal intervention wines, and delicious food, with his wife and a close friend. He invites you to visit and say hello!

Allegra Hyde is the author of the story collection The Last Catastrophe, which was an Editors’ Choice selection at The New York Times. Her debut novel, Eleutheria, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker and short-listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her first story collection, Of This New World, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. She teaches creative writing at Smith College.

Jane Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG awards. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Yale School of Drama, Kaczmarek made her television debut on The Paper Chase and Hill Street Blues. On stage, she has appeared on Broadway and off, and for 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include Long Day's Journey Into Night with Alfred Molina and in a co-production of Our Town with Deaf West Theatre and the 2023 Tony Award–winning Pasadena Playhouse. Kaczmarek was recently featured in The Changeling on Apple TV+, starring LaKeith Stanfield, and the short film Now I Lay Me Down, which was screened at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in 2024. Upcoming projects include a special four-episode reboot of Malcolm in the Middle and on Disney+ and the Netflix series The Boroughs, produced by the Duffer Brothers. Her favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.

William Sidney Porter, known by the pseudonym O. Henry, was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, in September 1862. The pseudonym “O. Henry” first appeared over the story “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking,” which was published in the December 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine. Cabbages and Kings was his first collection of short stories. The Four Million, his second collection of short stories, was published in 1906. Additional collections include The Trimmed Lamp, Heart of the West, The Voice of the City, The Gentle Grafter, Roads of Destiny, Options, Strictly Business, and Whirligigs. Sixes and Sevens, Rolling Stones, and Waifs and Strays were published posthumously.

Amor Towles is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, Rules of Civility, and a bestselling story collection, Table for Two. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts.

O. Henry Prize, continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, The Best Short Stories: The O. Henry Prize Winners contains prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by the guest editor, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction. Jenny Minton Quigley is the series editor.

CREDITS

“The Import” first appeared in Ploughshares and subsequently published in A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness: Stories. Copyright © 2023 by Jai Chakrabarti. Used by permission of the author and Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

“Mobilization” first appeared in Story and subsequently published in The Last Catastrophe: Stories. Copyright © 2023 by Allegra Hyde. Used by permission of the author and Vintage Books, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.