Tobias Wolff captures $20,000 Story Prize

American author Tobias Wolff has captured the prestigious Story Prize for his short-story collection Our Story Begins.

The Alabama-born writer was handed the $20,000 US award on Wednesday.

Established in 2004, the prize honours excellence in the short-story genre.

The other finalists — Jhumpa Lahiri for Unaccustomed Earth and Joe Meno for Demons in the Spring  — each receive $5,000 US.

Wolff, a professor at Stanford University in California, has made a name for himself in memoir and short-story writing.

His first short-story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, was published in 1981 and released to some acclaim. He then published another two anthologies of short stories.

Our Story Begins includes 16 stories from three previous collections.

His 1989 memoir This Boy's Life  — chronicling Wolff's itinerant adolescence — was made into a movie in 1993 starring Leonardo diCaprio and Robert De Niro.

A second memoir,  In Pharaoh's Army (1994), details his tour of duty in Vietnam.

Previous winners include Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker  (2005), Patrick O'Keeffe for The Hill Road (2006), Mary Gordon for  The Stories of Mary Gordon (2007), and Jim Shepard for  Like You'd Understand, Anyway (2008).