The $5,000 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing honors a nonfiction book about sports. Eligible titles should be of a biographical, investigative, historical, or analytical nature and of the strongest literary character.
All winners and finalists for this award are eligible to receive PEN America’s official winner or finalist seal. If you are a publisher of a shortlisted or winning book for this award and are interested in obtaining PEN’s award seal, please write to [email protected].
Current Cycle: 2019
Honoring books published in 2018.
Submissions: June-August 2018
Judges Announced: December 2018
Longlists Announced: December 2018
Shortlists Announced: January 2019
Awards Ceremony: Watch the Livestream
2019 Finalists
Featured Honoree: Rowan Ricardo Phillips, 2019 Winner
The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey, Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hudson Booksellers | IndieBound
Judges: Chris Bachelder, Rafi Kohan, Carvell Wallace
From the judges’ citation: “The Circuit is a dizzy, unbridled, obsessive book about a love for tennis told by recounting the minutiae of the 2017 men’s season. Phillips transforms details into poetry as he follows the season-long trajectory of a gaggle of players culminating in a showdown between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. A book lovingly built for fans and non-fans alike, Phillips is uncommonly generous with the reader, taking time to render the game’s fine points with a ceremonious attention that can only be described as devotion. Such observance turns sport narrative into near religious text, and set against the dark backdrop of a Trump election and the author’s own recovery from a heinous Achilles injury, the book becomes a meditation on all things gorgeous and grave about the fragile human spirit and all it seeks to—and fails—to accomplish.”
Read a transcript of Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s acceptance speech »
History
Previous Winners
2019 Rowan Ricardo Phillips, The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)2018 Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)2017 Joe Nocera & Ben Strauss, Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA (Portfolio/Penguin Random House)2016 Scott Ellsworth, The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph (Little Brown & Company)2015 John Branch, Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard (W.W. Norton & Company)2014 Mark Fainaru-Wada & Steve Fainaru, League of Denial:The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth (Crown Archetype)2013 Mark Kram, Jr., Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion (St. Martin’s Press)2012 Dan Barry, Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game (Harper)2011 George Dohrmann, Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine (Ballantine Books)2010 Marshall Jon Fisher, A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played (Broadway Books)
Runners-up:
Richard Hoffer, Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics (Bison Books)
Wil Haygood, Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson (Chicago Review Press)
Warren St. John, Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference (Spiegel & Grau/Random House)
ELIGIBILITY AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Submissions for the next awards cycle will be accepted from June 1, 2019 – August 1, 2019.
Who is Eligible
Eligible:NOT eligible:
How to Submit
- PEN will only accept submissions from publishers or literary agents. Authors may not submit their own book for this award.
- Please download the Declaration of Eligibility here. Complete all fields and have a company executive sign the form in order to confirm the book’s eligibility. If eligible, please submit this form along with the rest of your application online. If the book does not meet all of the listed eligibility requirements, it will not be considered for this award.
- Each submission is $85*. If you would like to pay by check, please click CHECK at checkout. Checks should be made out to PEN America. Please also submit a verified email address on the submission form; your order cannot be processed without an email address, as this info will be used to later contact you regarding the shipments of your submission. Please note that submission fees are not refundable.
- Mail one copy of the candidate’s book to the address below between June 1 and August 15, 2018. Please note that we do accept galleys and bound manuscripts.
- Once the submitted book is received and reviewed for eligibility by PEN, you will be contacted by [email protected] by the end of the year and asked to ship one copy of the book to each of our three awards judges. Please add [email protected] to your safe sender list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Visit our FAQ page here.