Two British authors – David Constantine and Deborah Levy are on the shortlist for the Frank O’Connor short story award. The prize is worth €25,000 which makes it the world’s most valuable prize  for a short-story collection. Past winners have included Haruki Murakami, Nathan Englander and Edna O’Brien.

This year’s judges chose a shortlist of six titles from 78 longlisted books

•  Joyce Carol Oates’s Black Dahlia and White Rose which includes a story about a friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Short
• Swiss writer Peter Stamm, a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International prize, for We’re Flying
• American Claire Vaye Watkins for Battleborn
• Canadian Tamas Dobozy for Siege 13.
• Deborah Levy who was shortlisted for the Booker prize last year and this time was chosen for her collection Black Vodka,
• David Constantine for Tea at the Midland.

The winner will be announced in the first week of July.