PEN/Faulkner Foundation

Last updated
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Formation1980
PurposeCharitable arts foundation
Headquarters United States
Official language
English
Website penfaulkner.org

PEN/Faulkner Foundation (est. 1980) is an independent charitable arts foundation which supports the art of writing and encourages readers of all ages. [1] It accomplishes this through a number of programs, including its flagship PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, one of the premier fiction awards in America; the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction; and a number of educational and reading series programs. [1] Since 1983 the Foundation's administration is housed at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. [1] [2] The Foundation was established in 1980 by National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle. [1] [2] Novelist Robert Stone (b. 1937 – d. 2015) served as the Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Board of Directors for over thirty years beginning in 1982. [3]

Contents

History

Early years

After her novel Blood Tie won the National Book Award in 1978, Mary Lee Settle (b. 1918 – d. 2005) was invited to be a judge on the 1979 National Book Award's fiction panel. [2] The panel subsequently awarded first prize to Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato instead of the bestselling The World According to Garp by John Irving. [2] The New York publishing industry, angered by O'Brien's obscure title winning over Irving's bestseller, canceled its support of the National Book Award and changed the voting rules. [2] In response, in the fall of 1980, Settle and some friends from Charlottesville, VA launched a competing prize which named the "PEN/Faulkner Award". [2] "[Settle's] goal was to establish a national prize that would recognize literary fiction of excellence, an award juried by writers for writers, free of commercial concerns." [1]

Name

"PEN" is an acronym for Poets, Editors and Novelists and is associated with International PEN. [2] "Faulkner" is a tribute to novelist William Faulkner, one of Settle's main inspirations, who had donated his 1949 Nobel Prize money to fund awards for younger writers including the establishment of the William Faulkner Foundation which existed from 1961 to 1970. [2]

Mission

The foundation supports readers and writers of all ages and provides targeted resources. The readers are brought into direct contact with the writers. In order to support the reading of students, they also cooperate with teachers. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Faulkner</span> American writer (1897–1962)

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don DeLillo</span> American novelist, playwright, and essayist

Donald Richard "Don" DeLillo is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, the complexities of language, art, the advent of the Digital Age, mathematics, politics, economics, and sports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Roth</span> American novelist (1933–2018)

Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Powers</span> American novelist

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">T. C. Boyle</span> American novelist and short-story writer

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published nineteen novels and more than 150 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American literature</span> Literature written in or related to the United States

American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but it also includes literature of other traditions produced in the United States and in other immigrant languages.

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Finalists read from their works at the presentation ceremony in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The organization claims it to be "the largest peer-juried award in the country." The award was first given in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. Gass</span> American fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor (1924–2017)

William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts (2006), won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Proulx</span> American novelist, short story and non-fiction author (born 1935)

Edna Ann Proulx is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Stone (novelist)</span> American writer

Robert Anthony Stone was an American novelist, journalist, and college professor.

Edward Paul Jones is an American novelist and short story writer. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award for his 2003 novel The Known World.

Walter Abish was an Austrian-born American author of experimental novels and short stories. He was conferred the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1981 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship six years later.

The William Faulkner Foundation (1960-1970) was a charitable organization founded by the novelist William Faulkner in 1960 to support various charitable causes, all educational or literary in nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Lee Settle</span> American writer

Mary Lee Settle was an American writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rilla Askew</span> American novelist and short story writer

Rilla Askew is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in Poteau, in the Sans Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, and grew up in the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is a nonprofit literary organization that provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers' conferences and centers. It was founded in 1967 by R. V. Cassill and George Garrett.

Richard Bausch is an American novelist and short story writer, and Professor in the Writing Program at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has published thirteen novels, nine short story collections, and one volume of poetry and prose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yiyun Li</span> Chinese writer and professor

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. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Texas State University MFA</span> Educational program

The Texas State University Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a three-year graduate program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, USA. Fiction writer Doug Dorst is the current director of the program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitchell S. Jackson</span> American writer

Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 PEN/Faulkner Foundation, About page.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Matt Schudel (September 29, 2005). "Novelist Mary Lee Settle; Founded PEN/Faulkner Award". Washington Post.
  3. "Episode 39 – A Remembrance of Robert Stone - PEN / Faulkner". www.penfaulkner.org.
  4. "PEN/ Faulkner Foundation". www.idealist.org. Retrieved 2019-07-30.