2026 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize Finalists

Hub City Press is pleased to announce the five finalists for the 2026 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, which is awarded to an emerging Southern writer. The winner will receive $5,000 and publication by Hub City Press of their short story collection in fall 2027.

Five finalists have been selected after two rounds of reading, and the winner will be selected by judge Catherine Lacey. Catherine Lacey is the author of four novels: Biography of X, Pew, The Answers, Nobody Is Ever Missing, a short story collection, Certain American States, and one work of both memoir and fiction, The Möbius Book. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Cullman fellowship, an O. Henry, the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, and an award from Lambda for Lesbian Fiction. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages. Her second short story collection, My Stalkers, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2027. She lives in Mexico City.

The finalists are Justine Busto for Queens Road East - A Novel in Stories, Thomas Calder for You & Me, Blair Lee for How to Care for Living Creatures, Christie Marra for Living with Wolves, and Kaylie Saidin for Goose Update.

Justine Busto is a member of Authors Lab at the Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts and an editorial assistant for their journal, Litmosphere. She has an MA in English from Emory University, taught speakers of other languages in the US and México, and now helps first generation students write their college application essays with the non-profit GenOne in Charlotte, NC. Find her stories and essays in Gulf Stream Lit Mag, Prime Number Magazine, Litmosphere and upcoming in The North Carolina Literary Review. She was a finalist in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize of the North Carolina Writers Network and short-listed for the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize in Ireland. Online at: justinebusto.com

Thomas Calder is the author of The Wind Under the Door and the forthcoming novel, The Crave (Regal House Publishing). He earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. His work has appeared in Juked, Tampa Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch, and elsewhere. He is also a regular contributor to storySouth. His short fiction was a semifinalist for the 2025 Doris Betts Fiction Prize and his forthcoming novel, The Crave, was a finalist for the 2025 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. Along with writing fiction, he is the managing editor of Mountain Xpress, an alt-weekly in Asheville, and the co-host of DRAFT: Artistry in Conversation with fellow author Tessa Fontaine. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and daughter. 

Blair Lee is a writer and educator from North Carolina. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Sun, Moon City Review, and The Masters Review Anthology, among other places. 

Christie Marra is a legal aid lawyer specializing in housing justice. Originally from Greenlawn, New York, she now lives in the historic Highland Park neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Christie’s short stories have appeared in The Bangalore Review, Blaze Vox, Oyster River Pages and South85, and she is currently working on her first novel. Christie is an alumnus of The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow.

Kaylie Saidin is a writer and surfer based in coastal North Carolina. Her stories have been published in Oxford American, New Orleans Review, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from UNC Wilmington and her BA from Loyola University New Orleans. She is currently working on a novel. 

This prize is named in honor of C. Michael Curtis, who served as an editor of The Atlantic since 1963 and as fiction editor since 1982. Curtis discovered or edited some of the finest short story writers of the modern era, including Tobias Wolff, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Anne Beattie. He edited several acclaimed anthologies, including Contemporary New England Stories, God: Stories, and Faith: Stories. Curtis moved to Spartanburg, S.C. in 2006 and taught as a professor at both Wofford and Converse Colleges, in addition to serving on the editorial board of Hub City Press. C. Michael Curtis passed away in early 2023. This prize is made possible by a generous contribution from Michel and Eliot Stone of Spartanburg.

The winner of the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize will be announced across all social media platforms in the next week.