Stillhouse Press is thrilled to announce that Amy Stuber’s debut short story collection, SAD GROWNUPS has been awarded the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Publicized at the 61st annual PEN America Literary Awards on May 8th, this remarkable recognition establishes Stuber as an exciting new voice in fiction, and marks a major milestone for Stillhouse Press and the alumni, graduate, and undergraduate students, each of whom assisted in making this prodigious accolade possible.
Each year, the PEN/Bingham Prize seeks to celebrate an author whose debut collection of short stories represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise for future work, and this year’s judging panel—authors Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Leah Hampton, and Wendy Wimmer—chose SAD GROWNUPS as the standout. The judges described Stuber’s collection as “full of surprises, both in its craft and content,” lauding Stuber’s “mature, expansive explorations of womanhood, work and labor, the body, and the short story form itself.” They also praised her aptitude in balancing humor with “careful renderings of loss and struggle,” emphasizing her “feisty, poignant social commentary” and her talent for creating characters who persist beyond the page. Hailed as a “remarkable debut,” the judges concluded that SAD GROWNUPS exemplifies Stuber’s writerly potential and potent skill.
For Stuber, this honor is especially impactful. “To debut thirty some years into a writing career is strange and happy-making,” she stated on the award. “I’m so grateful to PEN, the judges, and truly to Stillhouse, a small, primarily student-run press, for taking a chance on my little book.”
Editor and Stillhouse alumni Rebecca Burke, who worked closely alongside Stuber whilst editing SAD GROWNUPS, praised the collection “a capsule of modern Americana—the sweet, the ugly, the reality we face each day in this country.”
“I had the great fortune to be introduced to Amy and an early draft of SAD GROWNUPS in 2020, when she first submitted to Stillhouse,” stated Burke on her work with Stuber. “She wound up withdrawing the manuscript due to another offer, and I sent her a message letting her know I loved the book. I couldn't promise anything at the time, but I wanted her to know her work was special, and Stillhouse would love to read anything of hers in the future. At the time, I was just thinking that maybe we would see a different short story collection in the future, but I couldn't let her withdraw without saying something about how her work stood out to me.”
Three years later, Burke would encounter Stuber’s work again, a revised version of her manuscript catching Burke’s attention and ultimately paving the way for the collection’s publication and its path to becoming an award-winning debut.
“Amy was a wonderful author to work with,” said Burke. “She was receptive to edits--she took my and our students' comments and transformed them into revisions I couldn't have imagined. I respect that she defended her choices when she disagreed with a suggested revision, and I think we walked away with a book we were all extremely proud of."
Taylor Schaefer, a nonfiction MFA candidate and the Director of Media and Marketing for Stillhouse Press who also served as Stuber’s publicist, was also incredibly impressed by Stuber’s work, remarking on the unique and exciting synergy between an unconventional storyteller and a publishing press unafraid to embrace bold voices.
“Amy Stuber knows who she is as a writer. She has had many opportunities to sell a novel to an agent or a larger publisher than Stillhouse Press, but she is committed to the form of the short story, not the longer traditional form of the novel," said Schaefer. "She knows what she loves to write, and her identity as a short story writer, even though her genre and her style is not typically treated as a commercially viable genre by larger publishers, is a huge aspect of her success. I think that the success of SAD GROWNUPS is a model of the exciting things that can happen when a publisher is free to take risks on new and unexpected work. The greatest joy in publishing SAD GROWNUPS has been discovering that readers are still hungry for cool, vivacious, and original short fiction like Amy's.”
The PEN/Bingham Prize comes with a $25,000 cash award intended to give writers the freedom and resources to pursue their next literary work. Stuber plans to donate a portion of her winnings to Palestinian relief organizations.
"We have so much respect for the work PEN America does to protect and elevate the voices of writers and journalists worldwide,” concluded Burke. “This recognition of Amy's and our students' work on SAD GROWNUPS feels monumental given our publication model. Stillhouse is an entirely student- and alumni-run small press. Our students and alums volunteer their time to bring these books to life because they believe in the projects. This feels like the ultimate reward for their many long months of hard work, and of course for the years Amy put into this book before it ever reached Stillhouse."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Stuber’s writing has appeared in the New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, The Idaho Review, Cincinnati Review, Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of the Missouri Review’s 2023 William Peden Prize in fiction, winner of the 2021 Northwest Review Fiction Prize, and runner-up for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. Her work received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIV, appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021, has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2023. She has a PhD in English, has taught college writing, and worked in online education for many years. Sad Grownups is her first book.
Stillhouse Press is George Mason University’s teaching press, one of the few literary presses in the country designed to give students the keys to the publishing house, offering experiential education in the field of publishing to undergraduate and graduate students alike.
For more information, visit Stillhouse Press or Amy Stuber's website.
May 13, 2025