Barthelme Prize for Short Prose

Congratulations to the winner and honorable mentions for the 2023 Barthelme Prize, judged by Kelly Link!

2023 Winner:
Cloudberries” by Brian Sneeden

Honorable Mentions:
“Bullet” by Kai Carlson-Wee 
“Hike” by Susan Li 

Kelly Link, on the winner: 
How wonderful it is, the marriage of economy and the arcane, as if a short story could be a kind of lozenge that, slipped under the tongue, estranges us from our idea of how both life and language work. Every sentence in “Cloudberries” has the effect of an acupuncturist’s needle, small pricks that let in strange energy.


Brian Sneeden is a poet, literary translator, and editor. His collection of poems, Last City, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2018. His poetry has received the Iowa Review Award in Poetry, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize, and has appeared in Harvard Review Online, Poetry Daily, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications. His translations have received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, the World Literature Today Translation Award for Poetry, the Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and other recognitions. His translation of Phoebe Giannisi’s Homerica (2017) was selected by Anne Carson as a favorite book of 2017, and his translation of Giannisi’s collection Cicada was published by New Directions in 2022. He is a lecturer in creative writing and publishing at Manchester Metropolitan University.


Thanks to everyone who submitted to the 2023 Barthelme Prize! The winner will appear in the print edition of Gulf Coast 36.2, available Spring 2024.