You may recall that I was a judge in last year’s Story Prize competition, which awards $20,000 to the author of the best short story collection published in the U.S. The judges for this year’s prize have been announced, and they are: author and Newsweek editor David Gates, poet and Slate editor Meghan O’Rourke, and Skokie librarian Patricia Groh. After the three finalists are announced, the prize will be presented in New York City in late February 2008.

Will National Book Award nominees Lydia Davis and Jim Shepard make the cut for their collections, Varieties of Disturbance and Like You’d Understand, Anyway? Or are there some other candidates you think might emerge from the pack? Let’s hammer out a hypothetical longlist…