NEW YORK — Andrea Barrett, an acclaimed fiction writer best known for the story collection “Ship Fever,” has won a $30,000 honor for making a “significant contribution” to short fiction.
Barrett, 61, is this year’s recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story, prize organizers said Thursday. She won the National Book Award in 1996 for “Ship Fever” and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003 for the collection “Servants of the Map.”
Rea judges noted that Barrett has set her stories in a wide range of places and historical periods, and praised her for a style that “surprises and disturbs and gratifies.”
The Rea award was established in 1986. Previous winners include Eudora Welty, John Updike and Alice Munro.
