The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award celebrates writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the physical or biological sciences and communicates complex scientific concepts to a lay audience. The winner receives a cash award of $10,000.
The PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award was founded by scientist and author Dr. Edward O. Wilson, activist and actor Harrison Ford, and the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. The award is also supported by Jim and Cathy Stone. The inaugural award was conferred in 2011. Examples of published works that exemplify the quality of writing the award is designed to acknowledge include Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring (1962), Lewis Thomas’s The Lives of a Cell (1978), and Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979).
All winners, finalists, and longlisters for this award are eligible to receive PEN America’s official emblems. If you are a publisher and interested in obtaining PEN America’s award emblem, please write to [email protected]. For more information, please visit our Awards FAQ page.
2024 Winner
For a work that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the physical or biological sciences and communicates complex scientific concepts to a lay audience.
Judges: Riley Black, Helen Ouyang, Jonathan Slaght
California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, Rosanna Xia (Heydey Books)
From the judges’ citation: “For thousands of years we’ve looked at coastlines as permanent and cherished places, lines between land and sea that coax people to settle and soak up nature’s bounty. But the eternal nature of the coast is an illusion. Coastal California offers a case study in what happens when some try to control a landscape and others move with it, a story deftly unfurled by Rosanna Xia in California Against the Sea. Xia is a sympathetic and careful observer, detailing the politics and (sometimes questionable) ethics of American settlement along the California coast, the natural and human-driven processes propelling change, and how people are confronting a new reality where the high tides of today will become the low tides of tomorrow. Tension — with time, with ourselves — is at the heart of California Against the Sea, the winner of the 2024 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, a book of beauty, resilience, empathy, and rebirth.”
2024 Finalists
The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths, Brad Fox (Astra House)
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Ben Goldfarb (W. W. Norton)
Womb: The Inside Story of How It All Began, Leah Hazard (Ecco)
In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took on the US Army, Charles Barber (Grand Central Publishing)
California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline, Rosanna Xia (Heyday Books)
History
Previous Winners
2023: Heartbreak, Florence Williams (W. W. Norton & Company)
2022 Fox & I: Uncommon Friendship, Catherine Raven (Spiegel & Grau)
2017 Luke Dittrich for Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets (Random House)
2016 Lauren Redniss for Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, and Future (Random House)
2015 Joshua Horwitz for War of the Whales: A True Story (Simon & Schuster)
2013 Leonard Mlodinow for Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (Pantheon)
2012 James Gleick for The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon)
2011 Siddhartha Mukherjee for The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner)
Eligibility
- Eligible titles must have been published between January 1 and December 31 of the applicable calendar year.
- Eligible books must be written by a single, living author.
- Authors of the work must be permanent U.S. residents or citizens.
- If you submit a book for this award, you may not submit it for any additional PEN America Literary Award, with the exception of the PEN Open Book Award. Please note that the PEN/Faulkner Award is not considered a PEN America Literary Award.
Submission Guidelines
- All submitted books must be published by a trade or academic publisher between January 1 and December 31 in the applicable year. Self-published books are ineligible for the PEN America Literary Awards.
- Books with more than one original author are ineligible for the PEN America Literary Awards.
- PEN America will only accept submissions from publishers or literary agents. Authors may not submit their own books.
- On the submission form, please select the award you are submitting to.
- Submissions of a book to multiple awards is allowed only in the case of the PEN Open Book Award. Please complete a separate submission for this award if applicable.
- Please submit verified email addresses on the submission form. Your order cannot be processed without an email address. Additional contacts are required so that we may be in contact directly if an author or translator is selected as a longlister, finalist, and/or winner.
- Upload a PDF file of the galley or final manuscript on the book submissions form. Book award submissions will be read as PDF files. Please upload the file saved as BOOKTITLE_AUTHORNAME. For the judges’ convenience, please upload a book file WITHOUT watermarks. Each book file will be kept confidentially between the Literary Awards team and the awards judges. Please note that if a book is longlisted, PEN America may request a physical copy be sent to the judging panel.
- Upload a high-resolution book jacket photo. This may be used later if the book is longlisted, a finalist, or a winner.
- Each submission is $85. Submission fees are not refundable. Please note that all payments must be made via the submission form.
- Submission fees may be waived for publishers whose annual net sales are less than $2 million. You may request an exemption here—this form asks for a letter on company letterhead stating that the press’s annual net sales are less than $2 million. Do not submit your title before requesting your fee exemption, as the Literary Awards Team will provide you with an alternative submission method.
- Once the submitted book is received and reviewed for eligibility by PEN America, it will be passed along to the judges. Please add [email protected] to your address book, as it will be the main point of contact from PEN America.