Lydia Davis, the American writer known for her very short stories, has been awarded the Man Booker International Prize.

The award, announced in London on Wednesday, is given every two years to a living author for “an achievement in fiction on the world stage.” It is accompanied by a prize of £60,000, or about $91,000. Eligible work must be published originally in English or widely available in translation.

Sir Christopher Ricks, chairman of the judges, said in a statement that Ms. Davis’s writings “fling their lithe arms wide to embrace many a kind. Just how to categorise them? They have been called stories but could equally be miniatures, anecdotes, essays, jokes, parables, fables, texts, aphorisms or even apophthegms, prayers or simply observations.”

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan, published “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis” to great acclaim in 2009.

Philip Roth won the Man Booker International Prize in 2011, prompting Carmen Callil, one of the judges, to resign from the judging panel in protest and complain to The Guardian that Mr. Roth “goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every book.”