Announcing the New PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers
PEN America is delighted to announce their newest literary award, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Offered for the first time during PEN’s 2017 Awards cycle, this award will recognize twelve emerging fiction writers for their debut short story published in a literary magazine or cultural website in 2016.
Each of the twelve winning writers will receive a $2,000 cash prize and will be honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City. In a further effort to launch the winners’ careers as fiction writers, the independent book publisher Catapult will also publish the twelve winning stories in an annual anthology entitled The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories, the first publication of which will be forthcoming in spring 2017.
This new award is generously supported by the family of the late Robert J. Dau, whose commitment to the literary arts has made him a truly fitting namesake for this new career-launching prize. Mr. Dau was born and raised in Petoskey, a city in Northern Michigan in close proximity to Walloon Lake where Ernest Hemingway had spent his summers as a young boy and which serves as the backdrop for Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring. Petoskey is also known for being where Hemingway determined that he would commit to becoming a writer. This proximity to literary history ignited the Dau family’s interest in promoting emerging voices in fiction and spotlighting the next great American fiction writer.
All eligible literary magazines are invited to submit their authors’ works published in 2016 for consideration. Submissions are now open and will be accepted through November 11, 2016. Publishers interested in submitting their author’s work can find more information on the award and its submission guidelines here.
PEN is thrilled to note that as of January 3, 2017, the following publishers have agreed to participate in the inaugural PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize by submitting their authors’ works for consideration:
All publishers who submit to the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize between now and November 11, 2016 will be added to the above list. If you are a publisher that plans to submit to the prize, please write to [email protected] to have your name added to the above list.
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