Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Story Prize and McNally Jackson: It's All About the Books

The Story Prize event is tomorrow night (March 5) at 7:30 p.m. at The New School's auditorium at 66 West 12th Street. The three finalists, Andrea Barrett (Archangel), Rebecca Lee (Bobcat), and George Saunders (Tenth of December) will read from and discuss their work on-stage. At the end, we'll announce the winner. We hope you can join us.

The evening aims, most of all, to be a celebration of these three authors, their incredible books, and, more broadly, short story collections. We're pleased to have one of the top independent booksellers around, McNally Jackson, selling signed copies at the event. And McNally Jackson is making it especially easy for anyone there—and those who can't be—to get copies. 

The McNally Jackson book table at last year's event
(L to R, Brett Duquette, and booksellers Anna Chen and Javier Molea)
photo © Beowulf Sheehan
  • Let's say you're at the event and want to buy signed copies of the books, but you don't want to lug them around all night (or are prone to accidentally leaving things behind, like some of us are). No problem: McNally Jackson will provide free shipping for anyone who buys three or more books. You walk out empty handed (or no more burdened than you were when you arrived), and the books show up later at your house.
  • Let's say a book is sold out, and you want a copy. McNally Jackson will follow up by shipping it after the event.
  • Let's say you can't make the event and still would like signed copies of Archangel, Bobcat, or Tenth of December. For one month after the event, McNally Jackson will ship signed copies of the three finalists' books for free (while supplies last) when ordered from their Web site. All you need to do to get free shipping is to type into the comment box at checkout: Free Shipping-The Story Prize.

We're very pleased that McNally Jackson is the official bookseller of The Story Prize. And last year, bookseller-in-chief Sarah McNally served as one of our judges. Our ultimate aim is to get more short story collections into readers' hands, particularly those of our finalists. Hats off to our bookseller for making it easier to buy these books—and, we hope, a little harder not to.