Eudora Welty was a short story writer and novelist known for her portrayals of the American South. She received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter.

Layered and diverse in both setting and style, whether it be Jenni Fagan’s mythical Scottish Isle, Helen Oyeyemi’s urban office or Benjamin Markovits’s American border town, this year’s ...