The PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel is awarded annually to a full-length novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction. The award is named after Ernest Hemingway and funded by the Hemingway family and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/Society. It is administered by PEN America. Mary Welsh Hemingway, a member of PEN, founded the award in 1976 both to honor the memory of her husband and to recognize distinguished first books of fiction.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer in the realist tradition. Her work has been compared to that of Richard Ford, Richard Price and Richard Russo.
Adam Haslett is an American fiction writer and journalist. His debut short story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, and his second novel, Imagine Me Gone, were both finalists for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2017, he won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. From 2018 to 2020, she served as the president of PEN America.
Elizabeth McCracken is an American author. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award.
Kevin Goodan is an American poet and professor. His most recent book is Spot Weather Forecast. His first book, In the Ghost-House Acquainted, won a New England/New York Award from Alice James Books, as well as the 2005 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. His poems have been published in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Mid-American Review, American Poet Magazine, Cutbank, and other journals.
Mohsin Hamid is a British Pakistani novelist, writer and brand consultant. His novels are Moth Smoke (2000), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), Exit West (2017), and The Last White Man (2022).
Moth Smoke is the debut novel by British Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid, published in 2000. It tells the story of Darashikoh Shezad, a banker in Lahore, Pakistan, who loses his job, falls in love with his best friend's wife, and plunges into a life of drugs and crime. It uses the historical trial of the liberal Mughal prince Dara Shikoh by his brother Aurangzeb as an allegory for the state of Pakistan at the time of the 1998 nuclear tests.
Leopold Damrosch Jr. is an American author and professor. In 2001, he was named the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University. He received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His areas of academic specialty include Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and Puritanism.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. Her short story collection Wednesday's Child was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II is a history book written by John W. Dower and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1999. The book covers the difficult social, economic, cultural and political situation of Japan in the aftermath of World War II and the nation's occupation by the Allies between August 1945 and April 1952, delving into topics such as the administration of Douglas MacArthur, the Tokyo war crimes trials, Hirohito's controversial Humanity Declaration and the drafting of the new Constitution of Japan.
The PEN New England Award is awarded annually by PEN New England to honor a New England author or book with a New England setting or subject. The award was established in 1975 by The Boston Globe in conjunction with PEN to honor the veteran Boston Globe editor Laurence L. Winship.
Kermit Moyer was an American author, best known for Tumbling, his collection of short stories. The New York Times Book Review called Tumbling, "a work of ringing authenticity" and greeted him as "an impressive new voice." His second book, a novel-in-stories called The Chester Chronicles, was published in February 2010 and was called "eloquent" and "stylish" by Publishers Weekly. Moyer died on March 8, 2024, at the age of 80.
Yannick Murphy is an American novelist and short story writer. She is a recipient of the Whiting Award, National Endowment for the Arts award, Chesterfield Screenwriting award, MacDowell Colony fellowship, and the Laurence L. & Thomas Winship/PEN New England Award.
Elyssa East is an American nonfiction writer. She is the author of the creative nonfiction book Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, which chronicles a murder that occurred in an area known as Dogtown, Massachusetts, just outside Gloucester, in 1984. As part of her research for the book, East interviewed the murderer, Peter Hodgkins, in prison. This nonfiction book won the 2010 L. L. Winship/P.E.N. New England Award and has been critically reviewed. According to East, the book was inspired in part by the paintings of Dogtown by Marsden Hartley.
Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II is a 2011 non-fiction book by American author Mitchell Zuckoff about a US military airplane called "The Gremlin Special", which crashed on May 13, 1945 in Netherlands New Guinea, and the subsequent rescue of the survivors. Because it involved a female WAC Corporal lost in the jungle with "savages", the public became keenly interested in following the story. It was written about in the November 1945 issue of Reader's Digest magazine, and many other press channels. In 2011 Zuckoff published a modern retelling based on interviews with surviving Americans and New Guineans, and other previously unpublished information.
Madras on Rainy Days is a 2004 novel written by Samina Ali.
Jessica Shattuck is an American author. Her debut novel, The Hazards of Good Breeding, was a finalist for the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award and a New York Times notable book, both in 2003. She subsequently published the novel Perfect Life, in 2009. Her third novel, The Women in the Castle (2017), became a New York Times best seller.
Jerald Walker is an American writer and professor of creative writing and African American literature at Emerson College.
