João Pedro Vala is one of this year’s PEN/O winners. Henry Prize for the short story Inesthe first chapter of his debut novel Grand Tourismpublished by Quetzal in 2022. The story was published in the North American magazine The Common thus becoming eligible.
The award, one of the most important for short fiction in the United States, explains Quetzal in a press release, selects 20 of all the short stories published in a year in magazines in the USA and Canada, which are then collected in an anthology edited by Vintage Books.
This year, the president of the jury was the writer Tommy Orange. Ines, by João Pedro Vala, was one of the 20 chosen, along with others by authors such as Colm Tóibín, Samanta Schweblin and Louise Erdrich.
“João Pedro Vala is the first Portuguese winner and one of the first non-Americans to win this award”emphasizes Quetzal. Created in 1919 to honor William Sydney Porter, this award has distinguished writers such as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, Truman Capote, John Updike, Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, Raymond Carver or Stephen King.
In 2024, João Pedro Vala published the novel Campo Pequeno (which won the Wook New Authors Award) and, in 2025, the essay Proust’s Dictionaryboth peel Quetzal.
The selected stories
-Five BridgesColm Tóibín, The New Yorker
-Flowers and Their MeaningsMarie-Helene Bertino, The Baffler
-American Realism, Brandon Taylor, The Atlantic
–The HareIsmael Ramos, The Common
–Where Are You and Where Is My Money, Ucheoma Onwututebe, A Public Space
–Love of My DaysLouise Erdrich, The New Yorker
Stick Season, Jenny Xie, The Sewanee Review
-She-Bear, Evgenia Nekrasova, The Kenyon Review
-This Time and the Next, Noel Quiñones, Michigan Quarterly Review
–Pretend, Mary Williams, CRAFT
–Case StudyWeike Wang, The Atlantic
–InesJoão Pedro Vala, The Common
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