Acclaimed author Mary Gordon has won the third annual Story Prize, the richest U.S. prize for short fiction, organizers announced Wednesday.

Gordon won the $20,000 US prize for The Stories of Mary Gordon, a short fiction collection written over 30 years. It includes 22 new or unpublished stories along with 19 that appeared in her 1987 volume Temporary Shelter.

The New York-based writer, also an English professor at Barnard College, has won acclaim for her novels, essay collections, novellas and The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for her Father, a memoir about resolving her conflicted image of her father, who died when she was seven.

When accepting the Story honour at a ceremony in New York, Gordon brought attention to the plight of short fiction authors.

"The short story is a very precious and somewhat endangered species," she said. "Short story writers never gain the place in American [letters] they deserve."

Past winners of the relatively young prize include Patrick O'Keeffe for The Hill Road and inaugural recipient Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker.

The award's two other finalists this year — Rick Bass for The Lives of Rocks and George Saunders for In Persuasion Nation — each received $5,000 US.