New York, N.Y. – The annual $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story is awarded to RICHARD BAUSCH.

Michael M. Rea, a passionate reader and collector of short stories, founded The Rea Award for the
Short Story in 1986 to be given annually to a living United States or Canadian writer whose work
has made a “significant contribution to the discipline of the short story form”.The Rea
Award is unique in that it is not given for lifetime achievement, a collection of stories or for a
writer’s body of work but rather for originality and influence on the genre. Cynthia Ozick, the
first winner of The Rea Award, said, “By now the Rea Award is an indispensable American institution
and a coveted American prize. It is our little Nobel – little only in the sense that it addresses
the short form.” Michael M. Rea died in the summer of 1996. Sponsored by the Dungannon Foundation,
named after Rea’s Irish ancestors,The Rea Award continues under the direction of his widow,
Elizabeth Richebourg Rea.

Previous winners of the Rea Award include Eudora Welty, James Salter, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Alice Munro, Paul Bowles, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Mavis Gallant, Grace Paley, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Lorrie Moore, Grace Paley, James Salter and Tobias Wolff.

You can find the complete press release here.

This story was featured in the OC Register.

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