Director of Creative Writing Michelle Herman recently shared some exciting news with the English Department community: “Our own Claire Vaye Watkins (MFA 2011) has won The Story Award (beating out her co-finalists Junot Diaz and Dan Chaon)."

Claire received the 2012 Story Prize, which carries with it a prize of $20,000, for Battleborn (published by Riverhead Books). Battleborn is a collection of 10 stories set in the American West, ranging from the California Gold Rush of 1849, to the abandoned movie set that housed the notorious Manson family in the late 1960s, to recent times haunted by such past events. The collection's title refers to the state motto of Nevada, the author's home state, where many of the stories take place.

The other finalists for The Story Prize were celebrated authors Dan Chaon for Stay Awake and Junot Díaz for This Is How You Lose Her.

Debut author Claire Vaye Watkins—cited for her originality and the audacity of her voice—has won The Story Prize for Battleborn. (The Story Prize blog, headline)

Claire is the ninth-ever winner of The Story Prize and the first woman to win the prestigious book award since Mary Gordon took the top prize for The Stories of Mary Gordon in 2007. She is also the third author in the prize’s history to win for her debut collection. Previous winners, in addition to Mary Gordon, include Jim Shepard, Tobias Wolff, and, most recently, Steven Millhauser.

The $20,000 award remains the largest first-prize amount of any annual U.S. book award for fiction. Battleborn, and the two runners-up collections, were selected  from among 98 books entered in 2012, representing 65 different publishers and imprints. Established in 2004, The Story Prize annually honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction. Books by living authors, written in English and published in the U.S. in a calendar year are eligible.

Read more about the Story Prize here.

Claire Vaye Watkins, who was a Presidential Fellow during her time at the MFA Program in English at OSU, is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, One Story, The Paris Review, Hopkins Review, The Nevada Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Las Vegas Weekly and others.  A recipient of the Father William Ralston scholarship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Claire holds a BA from the University of Nevada Reno.

Update:

An email from Claire McGinnis,  Publicity Manager at  Riverhead Books / Penguin Group (USA), adds the following great news for Claire Vaye Watkins:

It’s been an incredible 24 hours for Nevada writer Claire Vaye Watkins, author of the debut story collection Battleborn.  Last night, Claire Vaye Watkins beat out Junot Díaz and Dan Chaon for The Story Prize, a $20,000 annual prize for the best short story collection.

This morning, she was awarded the American Academy Arts & Letters Prize of $10,000 for “a young writer of considerable literary talent for a work published in 2012.” Arts and Letters press release.

And yesterday she also was just named a One Story Debutante for the 2013 Debutante Ball.

This is all in addition to being one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, and having her collection Battleborn named a Best Book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York and Flavorwire, a Best Short Story Collection by NPR.org, and winning the 2012 Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Congratulations, Claire!