Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction ’Pemi Aguda is an MFA graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her writing has been published in Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, and other publications, and has been awarded the...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionSusan Muaddi Darraj is the author of American Book Award–winner A Curious Land and was a finalist for a Palestine Book Award. A United States Artists’ Ford Fellow and past winner of the Maryland State Arts...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionLouise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Erdrich lives in...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionPercival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionGarth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller Creation Lake, her latest novel; The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection; and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRuben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe,...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionDanzy Senna is the bestselling author of six previous books, including Caucasia, New People, and most recently Colored Television. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionBen Shattuck is the author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, which was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New...
Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionJohn Vercher lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and two sons. He has a BA in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in creative writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program....
Bruce Holsinger is a novelist, literary scholar, and editor of New Literary History. He has written or edited eleven books, including four novels, most recently The Displacements and The Gifted School, which won the Colorado Book Award. His essays have appeared in The...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionClaire Jiménez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York. She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019) and What Happened to...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionJamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award....
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionEmma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionDaniel Clowes is an acclaimed American cartoonist, illustrator, and screenwriter. He gained fame with his comic book series Eightball, which was notable for its dark humor and commentary on modern culture. Clowes'...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionHenry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and a writer whose work has appeared in No Tokens, Triangle House, Electric Literature, and the flash noir anthology Tiny Crimes. He co-created the performance series...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionNishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. He received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award from the...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionJames McBride is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Oprah’s Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionAlice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the...
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCOLIN WINNETTE’s books include Coyote, Haints Stay, and The Job of the Wasp, which was an American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next Pick. Winnette’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including...
Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels Hold Still, Want, and Flight, which were named best books of the year by The New Yorker, Time, Kirkus and others. She has also written non-fiction and criticism for The New York Times, The LA Times, Harper's Bazaar, Time,...
Alan Michael Parker is a cartoonist, novelist, and poet; he has written or edited eighteen books, including four novels and nine collections of poems. Awards for his writing include three Pushcart Prizes, two selections in Best American Poetry, the North Carolina Book...
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award WinnerYiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in...
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistJonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review,...
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistLaura Warrell is a contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and is a graduate of the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in HuffPost,...
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionMat Johnson is a Philip H. Knight Chair of the Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications include the novels Loving Day and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel...
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionMeng Jin the author of Little Gods, a finalist for both the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in...
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistDionne Irving is originally from Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of THE ISLANDS (Catapult) and QUINT (7.13 Books) She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program and the Initiative on Race and Resilience at the...
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistKathryn Harlan received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she now teaches writing. She was the recipient of the 2019 August Derleth Graduate Creative Writing Prize. Her work has appeared in the...
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionConner Habib hosts the podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib, which features in-depth conversations on topics as broad as punk rock, philosophy, fiction, and occultism. His writing has appeared in multiple...
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionBorn and raised in Puerto Rico, Mayra Cuevas is the author of the teen novels Does My Body Offend You? and Salty, Bitter, Sweet. Her short story Resilient was published as part of the anthology FORESHADOW. Mayra is...
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRubén Degollado is an educator from Texas and the author of The Family Izquierdo: A Novel and the young adult novel Throw. His fiction has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and...
Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the novel, Monster in the Middle, which was published in 2021, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, and was on numerous best of the year lists. Tiphanie is also the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the Bocas...
R.O. Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, is being translated into seven languages and was named a best book of the year by over forty publications. The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award and the...
Christopher Bollen is the author of five novels, including A Beautiful Crime in 2020. His latest novel, The Lost Americans, will be published by Harper in March 2023. Bollen also writes for a number of publications including the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and...
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRabih Alameddine is the author of the novels An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine; Koolaid; The Hakawati; and the story collection The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize. Purchase The Wrong End of the...
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionNawaaz Ahmed was born in Tamil Nadu, India. Before turning to writing, he was a computer scientist, researching search algorithms for Yahoo. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and is the winner of...
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCarolina de Robertis is the author of five novels, including Cantoras, winner of both a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, and a finalist for both the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; it was...
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCarolyn Ferrell is the author of the short-story collection Don’t Erase Me, which received the Art Seidenbaum Award of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize program, the John C. Zacharis Award given by Ploughshares, and...
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionImbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been translated into eleven...
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Louise Erdrich
Eugenia Kim
Rebecca Makkai
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
Scattered Lights by Steve Wiegenstein
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
Nine Shiny Objects by Brian Castleberry
Mother Daughter Widow Wife by Robin Wasserman
The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe
Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear by Matthew Salesses
Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
Deesha Philyaw
Luis Alberto Urrea
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Sing to It by Amy Hempel
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
The Night Swimmers by Peter Rock
Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li
Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis
Charles Finch is the author of several nationally bestselling novels, among them The Inheritance (Minotaur, 2016) and The Last Enchantments (St. Martin’s, 2014). His criticism regularly appears in The New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, New York, The Guardian, and...
Bernice L. McFadden
Alexi Zentner
Rion Amilcar Scott, Author
Board Member
Monday, May 4 at The Willard Hotel 6:30 pm, Cocktails 7:30 pm, Dinner and Award Program Join us on the 40th anniversary of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction as we celebrate this year’s distinguished books and authors. This exquisite literary evening—our sole...
Don’t Skip Out on Me by Willy Vlautin
Love War Stories by Ivelisse Rodriguez
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Tomb of the Unknown Racist by Blanche McCrary Boyd
Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award Winner
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation's Chair, Co-Chairs, Honorary Co-Chairs, Benefit Committee, and Board of Directors request the pleasure of your company at THE 31ST ANNUAL PEN/FAULKNER GALA Saturday, October 26, 2019 Katzen Arts Center, American University 4400...
The 2019 PEN/Faulkner Gala will be held on Saturday, October 26th at the Katzen Arts Center at American University! Don't miss out on this evening of incredible literature!
Though James Hannaham is an award winning author, he is also a performer and visual artist. His novel Delicious Foods was the winner of the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction as well as the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Hannaham’s novel follows three unforgettable...
ZZ Packer was recognized as a talented writer at the early age of 19 for her first significant publication “Sometimes You Get Lucky” in Seventeen magazine. Another of Packer’s short stories, featured in the Debut Fiction issue of The New Yorker, became a title story...
David Bradley’s novel The Chaneysville Incident won the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Academy Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The novel was inspired by the discovery of the graves of runaway slaves on a farm near...
Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's second novel Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalist, follows the life of a seventh grade teacher as she grapples with being new to teaching, being new to the school and being newly engaged. Her first novel...
Tickets and Sponsorships Now Available! We cordially invite you to attend the PEN/Faulkner Gala on Monday, September 24, 2018. This year marks the 30th anniversary of this special event, a unique evening in Washington, DC, that celebrates important voices in...
Announcing the 2018 Award for Fiction finalists: Hernan Diaz for In the Distance (Coffee House Press) Samantha Hunt for The Dark Dark (FSG Originals) Achy Obejas for The Tower of the Antilles (Akashic Books) Joan Silber for Improvement (Counterpoint) Jesmyn...
BELONGING: The 29th Annual PEN/Faulkner Celebration Monday, October 16th, 2017 | 6:00 PM NEW LOCATION: The Showroom | 1099 14th Street, NW On Monday, October 16th, 2017, PEN/Faulkner will hold its 29th Annual PEN/Faulkner Celebration at THE SHOWROOM in downtown...
The 37th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Ceremony & Dinner Saturday, May 6th, 2017 at 7:00 PM Folger Shakespeare Library Celebrating the winner as "first among equals," the 37th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Ceremony & Dinner will take place at the Folger Shakespeare...
RISK: The 28th Annual PEN/Faulkner Celebration Monday, September 26th, 2016 | 6:30 PM On Monday, Sept. 26th, 2016, PEN/Faulkner will hold its 28th Annual PEN/Faulkner Celebration at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. This annual event supports...
The 36th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Ceremony & Dinner May 14th, 2016 at 7:00 PM Folger Shakespeare Library Celebrating the winner as "first among equals," the 36th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Ceremony & Dinner will take place at the Folger Shakespeare Library in...
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