With full hearts we announce that Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern has been named the winner of the 2019 National Magazine Award for Fiction by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
McSweeney’s Quarterly was recognized for three pieces from Issue 53, a collection of short stories packaged alongside eight party balloons, each one emblazoned with a very short story. The award honors “Skinned,” by Lesley Nneka Arimah, “Vinegar on the Lips of Girls,” by Julia Dixon Evans, and “Unsound,” by Maria Reva. Finalists for the 2019 National Magazine Award for Fiction are Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, The New Yorker, and Oxford American.
“In these short stories, young women find the fortitude to liberate themselves from communities that are hostile to them. With crisp dialogue, melodic sentences and nimbly immersive world-building, ‘Skinned,’ ‘Vinegar on the Lips of Girls’ and ‘Unsound,’ deftly explore the imprisonment of young women by social convention and the peculiar and specific longing of girls,” the judges wrote, celebrating McSweeney’s “assured spirit—and its commitment to surprise.”
This is the Quarterly’s third National Magazine Award for Fiction, a remarkable feat for a publisher of our size. Our goal—every time—is to publish the most unexpected, groundbreaking work we can find, regardless of provenance, and it wouldn’t be possible without subscribers. Subscribers are the lifeblood of a publication like McSweeney’s—more than anything, new subscribers allow us to continue publishing important new writing.
Come right this way to subscribe or to order back issues of Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern.