The winner of the 2023 Story of the Year, along with the $50 prize and enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, is:

Desert Blues in a Minor Key by Jonathan Kosik

The linguistic choices and presentation in this story are excellent, from the opening parallelism and the small alliterations to the line-by-line delivery that helps feed some of the complex layering and subtle character development. The hissing grandmother and valve stem set the mood, preparing us for the challenging ambiguity of the grandfather’s remark–is it targeted at the line above it, or the line below?–all followed by the discordant double meaning of the final two lines.

Jonathan joins Bob Thurber and Jennifer L. Freed as a two-time Story of the Year winner, after capturing the award in 2017 with Constellations.

Honourable mentions go to Widowmaker by Tim Boiteau and Keeping Up Appearances by Lynn Kozlowski.