Pittsburgh, PA – Patricia Grace King, of Durham, England, is the winner of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for a collection of short fiction. King’s collection, Those Who Vanish, was selected by Quan Barry. Those Who Vanish will be published in September 2026.

“The stories in Patricia Grace King’s ravishing Those Who Vanish chronicle the consequences of inhabiting spaces both physical and psychic where one doesn’t naturally belong,” offered Barry, author of The Unveiling. “In stories ranging from conflict-ravaged Guatemala to the American Midwest and beyond, King’s unrelenting exploration of our need to survive while retaining our humanity propels these narratives into surprising and heart-breaking terrain. As one character poignantly asks of another, ‘The real question is, do you want to be found?’ Those Who Vanish doesn’t present us with easy answers but masterfully interrogates what it means to be lost and the often blinding nature of self-discovery.”

Set in Guatemala during its decades-long civil conflict, Those Who Vanish follows the stories of Guatemalan citizens and North American expats brought into contact by war. Across eight stories, martyrs and missionaries, guerrillas and gringos are thrown together amid political violence. A peace worker shelters a rebel fighter. An exile returns to confront the legacy of her parents’ murders. The Virgin Mary begins appearing above an elderly woman’s stove. Set in a world of daily disappearances, the collection addresses a vital question: when everything is snatched away, what remains of lives, of memory, of faith?

“As I’ve learned to write stories, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize has become a North Star for me,” shared King. “When I heard this year that my collection had won, I literally fell on the floor. I’ll be grateful for the rest of my days to the University of Pittsburgh Press and to this year’s judge, Quan Barry, a luminous human being and a writer of such prolific and lyrical force.”

Patricia Grace King holds a Ph.D. in English from Emory University. Her shorter fiction has won the Miami University Novella Prize, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, the Florida Review’s Leiby Prize, and the Kore Press Fiction Award. The manuscript of her debut novel was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize. She grew up in western North Carolina and has since lived in Spain, Guatemala, and the UK, where she now resides.

About the Drue Heinz Literature Prize

The Drue Heinz Literature Prize recognizes and supports writers of short fiction and makes their work available to readers around the world. The award is open to authors who have published a book-length collection of fiction or at least three short stories or novellas in commercial magazines or literary journals. Manuscripts are judged anonymously by nationally known writers. Past judges have included Robert Penn Warren, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Rick Moody, and Joan Didion. Winners receive a cash prize of $15,000, publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press, and support in the international promotion of their book.

About the University of Pittsburgh Press

The University of Pittsburgh Press is a publisher with distinguished lists in a wide range of scholarly and cultural fields. Founded in 1936, we publish books for general readers, scholars, and students.

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