Mimi Kawahara's Disaster preparedness test, ex post facto won the 2026 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, the Bookseller reported. Founded and organized by the Desperate Literature bookshop in Madrid, Spain, the award is "an international attempt to provide a holistic framework of opportunities for writers of innovative and boundary-pushing short fiction."
Judge Ottessa Moshfegh called the winning book "devastatingly intimate... accomplishes something exceedingly rare... so structurally inventive." Judge Joanna Walsh said: "The Desperate Literature Short Story Prize remains a beacon for experiment in times when this is both increasingly rare and increasingly vital."
As winner, Kawahara receives €2,000 (about $2,330), a week-long residency at the Civitella Ranieri artists' retreat in Umbria, Italy, and a manuscript assessment of up to 60,000 words through the Literary Consultancy.
The runners up--Eric Baker for This History of Violence and Emily Roese for Slug--each receive €1,000 (about $1,165), while all three writers will have a consultation with a literary agent from Johnson & Alcock. The 11 shortlisted writers will be published by Desperate Literature in its annual collection, Eleven Stories, as well as receiving an invitation to read at a number of events over the course of the next year, the first of which will be a launch event at the Madrid bookshop, the Bookseller noted.