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.
The winner is selected by a panel of three distinguished fiction writers and receives a cash prize of US$25,000. [1] Along with the winner, two finalists and two runners-up receive a Ucross Residency Fellowship at the Ucross Foundation, a retreat for artists and writers on a 22,000 acre (89 km²) ranch on the high plains in Ucross, Wyoming. The award ceremony is held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
The award presentation is sponsored in part by the JFK Presidential Library. [2]
The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by PEN International affiliates in over 145 PEN centres around the world.
Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
1976 | Loyd Little | Parthian Shot | |
1977 | Renata Adler | Speedboat | |
1978 | Darcy O'Brien | A Way of Life, Like Any Other | |
1979 | Reuben Bercovitch | Hasen | |
1980 | Alan Saperstein | Mom Kills Kids and Self | |
1981 | Joan Silber | Household Words | |
1982 | Marilynne Robinson | Housekeeping | |
1983 | Bobbie Ann Mason | Shiloh and Other Stories | |
1984 | Joan Chase | During the Reign of the Queen of Persia | |
1985 | Josephine Humphreys | Dreams of Sleep | |
1986 | Alan V. Hewat | Lady's Time | |
1987 | Mary Ward Brown | Tongues of Flame | |
1988 | Lawrence Thornton | Imagining Argentina | |
1989 | Jane Hamilton | The Book of Ruth | |
1990 | Mark Richard | The Ice at the Bottom of the World | |
1991 | Bernard Cooper | Maps to Anywhere | |
1992 | Louis Begley | Wartime Lies | |
1993 | Edward P. Jones | Lost in the City | |
1994 | Dagoberto Gilb | The Magic of Blood | |
1995 | Susan Power | The Grass Dancer | |
1996 | Chang-Rae Lee | Native Speaker | |
1997 | Ha Jin | Ocean of Words | |
1998 | Charlotte Bacon | A Private State | |
1999 | Rosina Lippi | Homestead |
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2000 | Jhumpa Lahiri | Interpreter of Maladies | Winner | [4] |
2001 | Akhil Sharma | An Obedient Father | Winner | |
Mohsin Hamid | Moth Smoke | Finalist | ||
Tom Paine | Scar Vegas and other Stories | Finalist | ||
Myla Goldberg | Bee Season | Runner-Up | ||
Elissa Schappell | Use Me | Runner-Up | ||
2002 | Justin Cronin | Mary and O’Neil | Winner | |
Peter Orner | Esther Stories | Finalist | ||
Manil Suri | The Death of Vishnu | Finalist | ||
Carolyn Cooke | The Bostons | Runner-Up | ||
Micheline Aharonian Marcom | Three Apples Fell From Heaven | Runner-Up | ||
2003 | George Brownstein | The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. W | Winner | |
Christie Hodgen | A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw | Finalist | ||
Gabe Hudson | Dear Mr. President | Finalist | ||
Jonathan Tel | Arafat’s Elephant | Runner-Up | ||
Julia Whitty | A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga | Runner-Up | ||
2004 | Jennifer Haigh | Mrs. Kimble | Winner | |
Murad Kalam | Night Journey | Finalist | ||
Z. Z. Packer | Drinking Coffee Elsewhere | Finalist | ||
Suki Kim | The Interpreters | Runner-Up | ||
Ellen Ullman | The Bug | Runner-Up | ||
2005 | Chris Abani | GraceLand | Winner | |
Samina Ali | Madras on Rainy Days | Finalist | ||
Laurie Lynn Drummond | Anything You Say Can and Will be Used Against You | Finalist | ||
Jerome Richard | The Kiss of the Prison Dancer | Runner-Up | ||
Hannah Tinti | Animal Crackers | Runner-Up | ||
2006 | Yiyun Li | A Thousand Years of Good Prayers | Winner | |
Daniel Alarcon | War by Candlelight | Finalist | ||
Douglas Trevor | The Thin Year in the Fabric of Space | Finalist | ||
Karen Olsson | Waterloo | Runner-Up | ||
Jess Row | The Train to Lo Wu | Runner-Up | ||
2007 | Ben Fountain | Brief Encounters With Che Guevara | Winner | |
Yvette Christianse | Unconfessed | Finalist | ||
Rebecca Johns | Icebergs | Finalist | ||
Janna Levin | A Madman Dreams of Turnning Machines | Runner-Up | ||
Marisha Pessl | The Special Topics in Calamity Physics | Runner-Up | ||
2008 | Joshua Ferris | Then We Came to the End | Winner | |
Rebecca Curtis | Twenty Grand | Finalist | ||
Ravi Howard | Like Trees Walking | Finalist | ||
Gary Schanbacher | Migration Patterns | Runner-Up | ||
Margot Singer | The Pale of Settlement | Runner-Up | ||
2009 | Michael Dahlie | A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living | Winner | |
Sana Krasikov | One More Year | Finalist | ||
Ed Park | Personal Days | Finalist | ||
Doug Dorst | Alive in Necropolis | Runner-Up | ||
Matthew Quick | The Silver Linings Playbook | Runner-Up | ||
2010 | Brigid Pasulka | A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True | Winner | [5] |
C. E. Morgan | All the Living | Finalist | ||
Abraham Verghese | Cutting for Stone | Finalist | ||
Mary Beth Keane | The Walking People | Runner-Up | ||
Lydia Peelle | Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing | Runner-Up | ||
2011 | Brando Skyhorse | The Madonnas of Echo Park | Winner | |
Patricia Engel | Vida | Finalist | ||
Suzanne Rivecca | Death Is Not An Option | Finalist | ||
Danielle Evans | Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self | Honorable mention | ||
Helen Simonson | Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand | Honorable mention | ||
2012 | Teju Cole | Open City | Winner | [6] |
Amy Waldman | The Submission | Finalist | ||
Stephanie Powell Watts | We Are Taking Only What We Need | Finalist | ||
Chad Harbach | The Art of Fielding | Honorable mention | ||
Marjorie Hudson | Accidental Birds of the Carolinas | Honorable mention | ||
2013 | Kevin Powers | The Yellow Birds | Winner | [7] |
Jennifer duBois | A Partial History of Lost Causes | Finalist | ||
Vaddey Ratner | In the Shadow of the Banyan Tree | Finalist | ||
Catherine Chung | Forgotten Country | Honorable mention | ||
Peter M. Wheelwright | As It Is On Earth | Honorable mention | ||
2014 | NoViolet Bulawayo | We Need New Names | Winner | [8] [9] |
Mitchell S. Jackson | The Residue Years | Finalist | ||
Anthony Wallace | The Old Priest | Finalist | ||
Jasmine Beach-Ferrara | Damn Love | Honorable mention | ||
Kristopher Jansma | The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards | Honorable mention | ||
Ethan Rutherford | The Peripatetic Coffin | Honorable mention | ||
2015 | Arna Bontemps Hemenway | Elegy on Kinderklavier | Winner | [10] |
Kim Fu | For Today I Am a Boy | Finalist | ||
Atticus Lish | Preparation for the Next Life | Finalist | ||
Mark Chiusano | Marine Park | Honorable mention | ||
Diane Cook | Man V. Nature | Honorable mention | ||
2016 | Ottessa Moshfegh | Eileen | Winner | [11] |
S. M. Hulse | Black River | Finalist | ||
Margaret Malone | People Like You | Finalist | ||
Karim Dimechkie | Lifted by the Great Nothing | Honorable mention | ||
Chigozie Obioma | The Fisherman | Honorable mention | ||
2017 | Yaa Gyasi | Homegoing | Winner | [12] |
Bill Beverly | Dodgers | Finalist | ||
Leopoldine Core | When Watched | Finalist | ||
Callan Wink | Dog Run Moon | Honorable mention | ||
Melissa Yancy | Dog Years | Honorable mention | ||
2018 | Weike Wang | Chemistry | Winner | [13] |
Lisa Ko | The Leavers | Finalist | ||
Adelia Saunders | Indelible | Finalist | ||
Ian Bassingthwaighte | Live from Cairo | Honorable mention | ||
Curtis Dawkins | The Graybar Hotel | Honorable mention | ||
2019 | Tommy Orange | There There | Winner | [14] [15] |
Akwaeke Emezi | Freshwater | Finalist | ||
Ling Ma | Severance | Finalist | ||
Meghan Kenny | The Driest Season | Honorable mention | ||
Nico Walker | Cherry | Honorable mention | ||
2020 | Ruchika Tomar | A Prayer for Travelers | Winner | [16] |
Madeline ffitch | Stay and Fight | Runner-Up | ||
Regina Porter | The Travelers | Runner-Up | ||
2021 | Kawai Strong Washburn | Sharks in a Time of Saviors | Winner | [17] [18] |
Maisy Card | The Ghosts are Family | Finalist | ||
Raven Leilani | Luster | Finalist | ||
Douglas Stuart | Shuggie Bain | Finalist | ||
C. Pam Zhang | How Much of These Hills Is Gold | Finalist | ||
2022 | Torrey Peters | Detransition, Baby | Winner | [19] |
Avni Doshi | Burnt Sugar | Finalist | [20] | |
Carolyn Ferrell | Dear Miss Metropolitan | Finalist | [20] | |
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois | Finalist | [20] | |
Kirstin Valdez Quade | The Five Wounds | Finalist | [20] | |
2023 | Oscar Hokeah | Calling for a Blanket Dance | Winner | [21] [22] |
Lisa Hsiao Chen | Activities of Daily Living | Finalist | [23] | |
Ramona Emerson | Shutter | Finalist | [23] | |
Alissa Songsiridej | Little Rabbit | Finalist | [23] | |
Ryan Lee Wong | Which Side Are You On | Finalist | [23] | |
2024 | Fuentes Javier | Countries of Origin | Winner | [24] |
Jinwoo Chong | Flux | Finalist | [25] | |
Miah Jeffra | American Gospel | Finalist | [25] |
The International Dublin Literary Award, established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. It promotes excellence in world literature and is solely sponsored by Dublin City Council, Ireland. At €100,000, the award is one of the richest literary prizes in the world. If the winning book is a translation, the prize is divided between the writer and the translator, with the writer receiving €75,000 and the translator €25,000. The first award was made in 1996 to David Malouf for his English-language novel Remembering Babylon.
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.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is an international children's literary award established by the Swedish government in 2002 to honour the Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002). The prize is five million SEK, making it the richest award in children's literature and one of the richest literary prizes in the world. The annual cost of 10 million SEK is financed with tax money.
The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry. As of 2013, it is reportedly Australia's richest literary prize with the top winner receiving A$125,000 and category winners A$25,000 each.
The PEN Translation Prize is an annual award given by PEN America to outstanding translations into the English language. It has been presented annually by PEN America and the Book of the Month Club since 1963. It was the first award in the United States expressly for literary translators. A 1999 New York Times article called it "the Academy Award of Translation" and that the award is thus usually not given to younger translators.
The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Four prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism and one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012, a fifth prize was awarded for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".
The Thurber Prize for American Humor, named after American humorist James Thurber, recognizes outstanding contributions in humor writing. The prize is given out by the Thurber House. It was first awarded irregularly, but since 2004 has been bestowed annually. In 2015, the finalists were for the first time, all women. Winners of the Thurber Prize have included authors from an array of diverse backgrounds, from The Daily Show hosts Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah to The New Yorker staff writers Calvin Trillin and Ian Frazier, as well as university professors Julie Schumacher and Harrison Scott Key.
Rawi Hage is a Lebanese-Canadian journalist, novelist, and photographer based in Montreal, Quebec, in Canada.
The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation is given by PEN America to honor a poetry translation published in the preceding year. The award should not be confused with the PEN Translation Prize. The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes. The award was called one of "the most prominent translation awards."
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.
The PEN/Malamud Award and Memorial Reading honors "excellence in the art of the short story", and is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. The selection committee is composed of PEN/Faulkner directors and representatives of Bernard Malamud's literary executors. The award was first given in 1988.
The Barry Award is a crime literary prize awarded annually since 1997 by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, an American quarterly publication for crime fiction readers. From 2007 to 2009 the award was jointly presented with the publication Mystery News. The prize is named after Barry Gardner, an American critic.
The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction is a British literary award founded in 2010. At £25,000, it is one of the largest literary awards in the UK. The award was created by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, who is generally considered the originator of historical fiction with the novel Waverley in 1814.
The Chautauqua Prize is an annual American literary award established by the Chautauqua Institution in 2012. The winner receives US$7,500 and all travel and expenses for a one-week summer residency at Chautauqua. It is a "national prize that celebrates a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts."
The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection is awarded by the PEN America "to exceptionally talented fiction writers whose debut work — a first novel or collection of short stories ... represent distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise." The winner is selected by a panel of PEN Members made up of three writers or editors. The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize was originally named the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. The prize awards the debut writer a cash award of US$25,000.
The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is awarded by the PEN America to an author for a book of original collected essays. The award was founded by PEN Member and author Barbaralee Diamonstein and Carl Spielvogel, former New York Times columnist, "to preserve the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature." The winner receives a cash award of $10,000.
The Stella Prize is an Australian annual literary award established in 2013 for writing by Australian women in all genres, worth $50,000. It was originally proposed by Australian women writers and publishers in 2011, modelled on the UK's Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
The Ferro-Grumley Award is an annual literary award, presented by Publishing Triangle and the Ferro-Grumley Foundation to a book deemed the year's best work of LGBT fiction. The award is presented in memory of writers Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley. It was co-founded in 1988 by Stephen Greco, who continues to direct it as of 2022.
Kwame Alexander is American poet, educator, publisher, Emmy® Award-winning producer, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of 40 books, including poetry, memoir, and children's fiction. His mission is to change the world, one word at a time.
PEN/Jean Stein Book Award is awarded by the PEN America to honor a "a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact". The award of $75,000 is one of the richest prizes given by the PEN American Center. It was first awarded in 2017.