The 2018 PEN America Literary Awards Winners

PEN/Jean Stein Book Award ($75,000)

To the author of a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, and that has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.

WHEREAS, Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf Press)
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “Layli Long Soldier’s ambitious WHEREAS is a grand reckoning with both language and history. As citizen, as mother, as poet, she asks with profound tenderness What man [or woman] is expendable? then leads the journey towards a consciousness of song as tough-minded inquiry and reclaimed territory. An elegant and fierce introspection defines this volume of poetry, as does a rectifying spirit of restless invention. The deep wound in the American psyche is genocide; and here, Long Soldier skillfully disrupts easy abridgments that render that inheritance a simple matter of an official Apology. WHEREAS is also about motherhood, being an artist, and the political valence of writing and loving. Its intriguing architecture propels us into the naturalness of interrogating the structures of language and power and creating a convenant with the self. We admire her artfulness as much as her depth, grace, sense of purpose, and essential imagination.”

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 2017—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. JUDGES: Mia Alvar, Rion Amilcar Scott, Justin Torres, Claire Vaye Watkins.

Sour Heart, Jenny Zhang (Lenny)
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “With humor and stunning honesty, Sour Heart tests and topples such categories as “immigrant fiction” or “coming-of-age story”—making its own vital, original, and wholly irresistible footprint on American letters. The book is rangy in tone and texture, a high stylist moving from the scatological to the sublime and back again. And Zhang is uncommonly, beautifully frank about that which embitters and that which enlivens. Sour Heart enlarges the reader’s understanding of the world with a voice so run through with lively contradiction it is as tender as it is rough, as mature as it is youthful, both urgent and cool.”

PEN Open Book Award

To an exceptional book-length work of any genre by an author of color, published in the United States in 2017. JUDGES: Eduardo C. Corral, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Amy Quan Barry.

A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, Alexis Okeowo (Hachette)
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “In A Moonless, Starless Sky, journalist Alexis Okeowo humanizes the lives behind the headlines, transforming often one-dimensional news stories from the African continent into narratives of endurance and survival. A young Ugandan couple escapes the Lord’s Army; a Mauritanian activist battles the ancient practice of slavery; locals fight back against Boko Haram in Nigeria; in Somalia, young women pursue their dreams of playing basketball despite religious edicts. These are narratives of everyday people confronting unimaginable challenges where one’s very existence becomes an act of resistance. Okeowo’s reporting demonstrates the multiplicity of human resilience and regeneration in impossible times. In a time when our own leaders conflate poverty with personal character, we can think of no more important book. The individuals showcased in A Moonless, Starless Sky are among the best and brightest anywhere in the world.”

PEN/EDWARD AND LILY TUCK AWARD FOR PARAGUAYAN LITERATURE ($3,000)

For the living author of a major work of Paraguayan literature. Another $3,000 is given to the winning translator in order to bring the work to the English-speaking world. JUDGES: Lorea Canales, Ruben Rios Avila, and Julia Sanches.

Fantasmario, Javier Viveros

From the judges’ citation: “El jurado ha decidido de forma unánime otorgar el Premio Tuck a Fantasmario, de Javier Viveros. En estos cuentos sobre la Guerra del Chaco entre Paraguay y Bolivia, no estamos ante una defensa patriótica “paraguaya” de esta guerra, sino ante un relato del hecho como tal de la guerra, de sus cuerpos sufrientes y de la marca que ésta deja en la conciencia de sus sobrevivientes. Para lograr el efecto buscado, Viveros reconoce que uno de los fantasmas que tiene que enfrentar es el de la literatura misma.”

“The jury has unanimously chosen to recognize Fantasmario, by Javier Viveros, with the Tuck Award. In these stories about the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia we are not dealing with a patriotic “Paraguayan” defense of the war, but rather with a tale of the question of war itself, of its suffering bodies, and of the mark that war leaves on the consciousness of its survivors. To achieve the effect he seeks, Viveros recognizes that one of the ghosts he must confront is literature itself.”

PEN Translation Prize

For a book-length translation of prose from any language into English published in 2017. JUDGES: Eric M. B. Becker, Lisa Hayden, Jenny Wang Medina, Denise Newman, Lara Vergnaud.

Katalin Street, Magda Szabó (NYRB Classics)
translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “The jury is proud to honor Len Rix’s exceptional translation of Magda Szabo’s novel Katalin Street, which tracks the intertwined lives of three Budapest families before and after the devastation of World War II. This beautiful translation illuminates Szabo’s deep humanity. Translating Katalin Street‘s intricate, elegant text required tremendous subtlety and artistry to achieve such flawlessness, and Rix clearly possesses the mastery to allow Szabo herself to stand out as an exemplary writer. This translation from the Hungarian does that, and Len Rix has gained lifelong admirers among the jury.”

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000)

For a book of essays published in 2017 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature. JUDGES: Vinson Cunningham, James Fallows, Gillian Tett.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
IndieBound | Amazon

From Theo Downes-Le Guin speech: “My mother was very suspicious about Internet’s ability to engage her into relentless conversation about her writing — so relentless as it captures from actually writing, but she set aside her reservations when it came to blogging. No Time to Spare combines unique intimacy of the letter with a polish of a published essay.” No Time to Spare is the last book by Ursula K. Le Guin, a person who fiercely believed in the possibility of literature, especially the imaginative literature, to change the world by imagining new worlds. She may have left us, but her visionary words never will.

PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography ($5,000)

For a distinguished biography published in 2017. JUDGES: Joe Jackson, Michelle Legro, Judith Thurman.

Richard Nixon: The Life, John A. Farrell (Doubleday)
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “Critics have called John Farrell’s Nixon “brilliant,” “exhaustive,” and “Shakespearian,” and all are deserved. Yet most stunning is the meticulous and eerie portrayal of Nixon’s toxic psychological progression, so that in the end Watergate or something like it was fated to happen. Horatio Alger tales run rampant in our culture, and Nixon played his to the hilt: the lower-middle-class kid—the “somebody who was nothing”—who rose to the top despite all obstacles. Yet so often omitted from the myth are its darker underpinnings: isolation, envy, self-pity, and finally, paranoia. We watch this all unfold in the best literary tradition: it is poignant and chilling simultaneously, and Farrell accomplishes this for the first time using newly released files and archival material. “I had to win,” Nixon said after an early and dirty campaign: “That’s something you don’t understand.” Unfortunately, however, we do, for hasn’t such “victory” become our national creed? Nixon’s descent is our descent, and this understanding elevates Farrell’s account into the true realm of tragedy.”

PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing ($10,000)

For a book that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the physical or biological sciences and communicates complex scientific concepts to a lay audience. JUDGES: Luke Dittrich, Deanna Fei, Dr. Carl Hart.

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, Lindsey Fitzharris (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “When Joseph Lister began his career as a surgeon in Victorian England, colleagues wore aprons caked with old blood and rarely washed their knives between procedures. Infections ran rampant, and hospitals were often just way stations to the morgue. In The Butchering Art, Lindsey Fitzharris provides a clear-eyed view over Lister’s shoulder, and lets us watch as he progresses toward the revolutionary idea that invisible germs could be lethal, and that killing those germs might save countless lives. Fitzharris is a brilliant narrator of visceral operating-room scenes, but her account of the medical community’s prolonged and contentious resistance to Lister is just as compelling. This important and compulsively readable book is a reminder that scientific advances face strong headwinds, and that even the best ideas need fierce champions.”

PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000)

To honor a nonfiction book on the subject of sports published in 2017. JUDGES: Chloé Cooper Jones, Sally Jenkins, Joe Nocera.

Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
IndieBound | Amazon

From the judges’ citation: “There has rarely, if ever, been an athlete as famous the world round as Muhammad Ali, and there has rarely, if ever, been an athlete whose life has been so thoroughly documents, in countless photographs and articles, and of course in books as well. And yet Jonathan Eig’s Ali: A Life, stands above them all. It is a beautifully-written, transcendent biography that renders vivid in every stage of how remarkable life: Ali the brash teenager, Ali the proud Muslim, Ali the conscientious objector—and then: Ali the warrior, the man of peace, and finally the icon. More than simply describing a life, Eig has created a context that allows us to understand that life more fully than we ever have before. This is biography at its best.”