Unaccustomed Earth, a bestselling collection of stories about the immigrant experience that was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri of Brooklyn, N.Y., is one of three books in contention for the $20,000 Story Prize.

Also nominated for the prize for U.S. short fiction are:

• Tobias Wolff of northern California for Our Story Begins.
• Joe Meno of Chicago for Demons in the Spring.

Wolff is best known for his memoirs This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army, and Meno is the author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails.

Lahiri, of Brooklyn, won a Pulitzer for Interpreter of Maladies, and Unaccustomed Earth won Ireland's Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Winner of the Story Prize will be announced March 4.