The Last Flight of Poxl West was the winner of the 2015 National Jewish Book Award for fiction. In a 2015 review of the book in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote:
It’s Mr. Torday’s ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas, and between old-school theatrics and more contemporary meditations on the nature of storytelling that announces his emergence as a writer deserving of attention.
Torday's work has appeared in Tin House, the Paris Review Daily, and The New York Times Book Review.
The Sami Rohr Prize honors emerging writers who explore the Jewish experience in a specific work of non-fiction and fiction. The $100,000 prize is the largest award of its kind.