We're overjoyed to share that the 2020 Prize for Fiction goes to Meron Hadero for Preludes, a collection of short stories that we'll be publishing in 2022. We can't wait to share these stories with you. Read on for more about Meron and Preludes, and deepest thanks to judges Dinaw Mengestu, Achy Obejas, and Ilan Stavans, the finalists, and everyone who entered this year.
The Judges’ Citation
With enormous power and wonderful subtlety, Meron Hadero grants us access to the inner worlds of people at moments when everything is at risk. In the stories that make up Preludes, the emotional stakes are high. In “The Suitcase,” on her first-ever visit with family in the city of her birth, a young woman finds herself paralyzed by the pressure of bridging the distance between relatives who left and those who stayed. In “Kind Stranger,” a woman on a brief return visit to Addis Ababa—Hadero’s characters are usually out of place, struggling to move backward or forward to a place that resembles home—is waylaid on the street by a man with a terrible burden to relieve.
Often the material stakes are breathtakingly high, too: A street sweeper who pins his hopes on a smooth-talking NGO employee; the residents of a village who, displaced by drought, fill their pockets with seeds and set out on foot for somewhere with water.
That closeness to the edge—of safety, of the known and being known—will resonate with all of us whose lives have been marked by border crossings, whether by choice or, more likely, because of complex political and environmental forces far beyond our control. As we enter a future that will be shaped more and more profoundly by such border crossings, these sharp, humane, beautiful portraits are a gift.
—Dinaw Mengestu, Achy Obejas, and Ilan Stavans
"My family had moved to the US a few weeks earlier from Ethiopia via Berlin, so I knew no English, but was fluent in Amharic and German. I’d speak those sometimes to strangers or just mumble under my breath to say what was on my mind, never getting an answer until the day I met Herr Weill." Read an excerpt from "The Wall" on Literary Hub.
About the Author
Born in Addis Ababa, Meron Hadero came to the US via Germany as a young child. A 2019–2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, her short stories have been shortlisted for the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing and published in Ploughshares (guest edited by Celeste Ng), Addis Ababa Noir (edited by Maaza Mengiste), McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Best American Short Stories, among others. Read more about Meron and her winning collection.