American author Jim Shepard has taken home the Story Prize for short fiction, beating Canadian finalist Vincent Lam's Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures.

Jurors for the fourth edition of the annual award chose Shepard's work for the $20,000 prize. The decision was announced on Wednesday night.

Like You'd Understand, Anyway is Shepard's third collection of stories and focuses on everyday lives from ancient Rome to today's Texas.

Shepard has published six novels, including Project X and Love and Hydrogen, and two previous collections of stories. He currently teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

Finalists Vincent Lam and British author Tessa Hadley, who wrote Sunstroke and Other Stories, each received $5,000 as runners-up.

London, Ont.-born Lam is an emergency-room physician. His critically acclaimed debut story anthology, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures — which draws on his experiences in med school and as a young physician — won the Giller Prize in 2006.

The Story Prize is an annual U.S. book award for short story collections written in English and published in the United States. Previous winners include The Stories of Mary Gordon and Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker.

With files from The Associated Press