PEN America is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards. These shortlists showcase 50 exceptional literary works chosen by our esteemed judging panels. With the addition of four new prizes, this year’s awards will be the largest ever, conferring nearly $315,000 to writers and translators spanning the fields of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, translation, and more.
The winners for all 2017 awards will be announced on February 22, with a few notable exceptions. Winners of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature will be announced live on March 27 at the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony, which will be held for the first time at The New School’s John L. Tishman Auditorium in Manhattan.
2017 PEN AMERICA LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS
PEN/Jean Stein Book Award ($75,000): To recognize a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact.
JUDGES: The judges are anonymous. Their names will be announced at a later date.
FINALISTS
Known and Strange Things
Teju Cole
Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Olio
Tyehimba Jess
Wave Books
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
Hisham Matar
Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Jane Mayer
Doubleday/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000): To an author whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2016—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.
JUDGES: Jami Attenberg, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Randall Kenan, Hanna Pylväinen, and Akhil Sharma
FINALISTS:
I
Rion Amilcar Scott
University Press of Kentucky
Amazon | Indie Bound
Clare Beams
Lookout Books/UNC Wilmington
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Mothers
Brit Bennett
Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
Alfred A Knopf/Penguin Random
Amazon | Indie Bound
Hurt People
Cote Smith
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000): For a book of essays published in 2016 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.
JUDGES: Eula Biss, Kiese Laymon, and Paul Steiger
FINALISTS:
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood
Belle Boggs
Graywolf Press
Amazon | Indie Bound
Known and Strange Things
Teju Cole
Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
Siri Hustvedt
Simon & Schuster
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Girls in My Town
Angela Morales
University of New Mexico Press
Amazon | Indie Bound
Becoming Earth
Eva Saulitis
Red Hen Press
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000): To an author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction published in 2015 or 2016 possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues.
JUDGES: Julia Angwin, Rich Benjamin, Jeff Biggers, Charles Duhigg, Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Lizzie Stark, and Jessica Valenti
FINALISTS:
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond
Crown/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
Patrick Phillips
W. W. Norton and Company
Amazon | Indie Bound
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
Sam Quinones
Bloomsbury Press
Amazon | Indie Bound
Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran
Laura Secor
Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship
Anjan Sundaram
Doubleday/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award ($10,000): For a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of the physical or biological sciences published in 2016.
JUDGES: Emily Anthes, Amy Ellis Nutt, Robin Marantz Henig, and Emma Marris
FINALISTS:
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets
Luke Dittrich
Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
Dan Flores
Basic Books/Hachette
Amazon | Indie Bound
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight
Julian Guthrie
Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Lab Girl
Hope Jahren
Alfred A Knopf/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish
Emily Voigt
Scribner/Simon & Schuster
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN Open Book Award ($5,000): For an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2016.
JUDGES: Ishmael Beah, Major Jackson, and Bich Minh Nguyen
FINALISTS:
The Book of Memory
Petina Gappah
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Big Book of Exit Strategies
Jamaal May
Alice James Books/University of Maine at Farmington
Amazon | Indie Bound
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
Helen Oyeyemi
Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House
Amazon | IndieBound
Look
Solmaz Sharif
Graywolf Press
Amazon | Indie Bound
Blackacre
Monica Youn
Graywolf Press
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): To honor a nonfiction book on the subject of sports published in 2016.
JUDGES: Jay Caspian Kang, Juliet Macur, and David Owen
FINALISTS:
The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers
Michael Leahy
HarperCollins
Amazon | Indie Bound
Catching the Sky
Colten Moore with Keith O‘Brien
37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Amazon | Indie Bound
Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA
Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss
Portfolio/Penguin Random House
Amazon | Indie Bound
Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town
S.L. Price
Atlantic Monthly Press/Grove Atlantic
Amazon | Indie Bound
Fastpitch: The Untold History of the Softball and the Women Who Made the Game
Erica Westly
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($5,000): For a distinguished biography published in 2016.
JUDGES: Evelyn C. White, Joyce Johnson, and Yunte Huang
FINALISTS:
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
Ruth Franklin
Liveright/W. W. Norton & Company
Amazon | Indie Bound
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
Joe Jackson
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Amazon | Indie Bound
A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley
Jane Kamensky
W. W. Norton & Company
Amazon | Indie Bound
Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer
Arthur Lubow
HarperCollins
Amazon | Indie Bound
Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White
Michael Tisserand
HarperCollins
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN Translation Prize ($3,000): For a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2016.
JUDGES: Mara Faye Lethem, Jeremy Tiang, Elizabeth Lowe, Annie Tucker, and Dennis Washburn
FINALISTS:
Confessions by Rabee Jaber
New Directions
translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Amazon | Indie Bound
Between Life and Death by Yoram Kaniuk
Restless Books
translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav
Amazon | Indie Bound
Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap
Archipelago Books
translated from the German by Tess Lewis
Amazon | Indie Bound
Justine by Iben Mondrup
Open Letter Books
translated from the Danish by Kerri A. Pierce
Amazon | Indie Bound
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Hogarth/Crown Publishing
translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
Amazon | Indie Bound
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000): For a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2016.
JUDGES: Jennifer Grotz, Kyoo Lee, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips
FINALISTS:
Pearl: A New Verse Translation by The Pearl Poet
Liveright/W. W. Norton &Company
translated from the Middle English by Simon Armitage
Amazon | Indie Bound
Abyss by Ya Hsien
Zephyr Press
translated from the Chinese by John Balcom
Amazon | Indie Bound
Preludes and Fugues by Emmanuel Moses
Oberlin College Press
translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
Amazon | Indie Bound
In Praise of Defeat: Poems by Abdellatif Laâbi
Archipelago Books
translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Amazon | Indie Bound
Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems by Dulce Maria Loynaz
Archipelago Books
translated from the Spanish by James O’Connor
Amazon | Indie Bound
2017 CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AND MANUSCRIPT AWARDS
(The following awards do not have finalists.)
PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature ($50,000): To a writer of any genre and of any nationality for their exceptional body of work.
JUDGES: Aravind Adiga, Ayad Akhtar, Robin Coste Lewis, Jessica Hagedorn, and Thrity Umrigar
PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers ($2,000 to 12 writers): To recognize 12 emerging fiction writers for their debut short story published in 2016.
JUDGES: Marie-Helene Bertino, Kelly Link, and Nina McConigley
PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History ($10,000): For a literary work of nonfiction that uses oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place or movement.
JUDGES: Gaiutra Bahadur, Helen Epstein, and Dan Kennedy
PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards ($7,500 and $2,500): Three awards which honor a Master American Dramatist, American Playwright in Mid-Career, and Emerging American Playwright.
JUDGES: Oskar Eustis, Michael C. Hall, and Young Jean Lee
PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry ($5,000): For an emerging American poet of any age showing promise of further literary achievement.
JUDGES: Camille Dungy, Ada Limón, and Patrick Phillips
PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): For a writer whose body of work represents an exceptional contribution to the field.
JUDGES: Pete Hamill, Sally Jenkins, and Michael Sokolove
PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000): For an author of a children’s or young-adult fiction to complete a book-length work-in-progress.
JUDGES: Margarita Engle, Sharyn November, and Polly Shulman
PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing ($2,500): For a magazine editor whose high literary standards and taste have contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits.
JUDGES: Michael Dumanis, Caitlin McKenna, and David L. Ulin
PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants ($2,000-$4,000): To support the translation of book-length works into English. PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature ($5,000): To a translator for a work-in-progress of a book-length translation of an Italian work of literary fiction or nonfiction into English.
JUDGES: Tyan Kogane, Edna McCrown, Fiona McCrae, Canaan Morse, Idra Novey, Allison Markin Powell, Antonio Romani, Chip Rossetti, Shabham Nadiya, and Ross Ufberg