Gao wins Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize

Jay Gao has won the 2022 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize for his mystery story "The Baron and His Volcano".

The prize was launched by Madrid-based bookshop Desperate Literature and aims to celebrate international writers of experimental fiction, supporting them at a formative stage of their writing careers.

Gao is the author of Imperium (Carcanet) as well as three poetry pamphlets, and a contributing editor for the White Review. In addition to a €1,500 (£1,290) cash prize, he will receive a seven-day residency at the Civitella Ranieri artist’s retreat in Umbria, Italy, and a manuscript assessment of up to 60,000 words through The Literary Consultancy. 

"The Baron and His Volcano" is told over a  series of 18 vignettes, and explores an unnamed narrator’s flight into an unsettling and disorientating Hong Kong, having recently left the company of the story’s mysterious Baron somewhere in Europe. Judge Joanna Walsh called Gao’s winning entry a "vertiginously nested mystery story about narrative itself".

This year’s runners-up are Evan Martinak for "Signs and Cymbals" and Avigayl Sharp for "The Mouse’s Bride", each receiving €750 (£645). All three writers will also get a consultation with a literary agent from Johnson & Alcock. 

Among the 11 shortlisted authors, Grace Henes has been awarded a 10-day residency by prize partner the Writers’ House of Georgia, which will include a reading spot at the 2022 Tbilisi International Festival of Literature. The de Groot Foundation, which funds the prize, will provide a travel stipend towards this.

All the shortlisted writers will be published by Desperate Literature in its annual collection Eleven Stories, as well as being invited to read at a number of digital and in-person events over the course of the next year. The first of these will be a launch event at the bookshop in Madrid, followed by a London launch at Burley Fisher Books in the autumn, and later, an event at Edinburgh bookshop Typewronger Books.

The prize was judged by authors Walsh, Natasha Brown, Ottessa Moshfegh, and literary translator Anton Hur.

Of the 2022 shortlist, Brown said: “In these rich and vibrant stories, the language surprises and delights. From surreal mouse proposals to the catharsis of visible grief, via the uncertainty of memory and perception, each of these stories creates a new, engrossing reality, while shedding light on our own.”