Alumn John McManus (MCW 2004) is the winner of the 2024 American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Dantiel W. Moniz for his story “Jack Sprat’s Wife.”

Moniz called McManus’ story “a gorgeously crafted and contained world, a peek inside the deep bowels of family, shame, and grief, which, although brief, also allowed me to see the characters past the page. From the first word, I tumbled into this story and was captivated until it let me go.”

John McManus is the author of the short story collections Fox Tooth Heart, Born on a Train, and Stop Breakin Down and the novel Bitter Milk. He’s the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Fellowship of Southern Writers’ New Writing Award, a Fulbright Scholar award in South Africa, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Literature Award, and a Creative Capital Literature grant. His MFA in fiction and screenwriting comes from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas.