The PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel honors a debut novel of exceptional merit by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction. The Award aims to preserve the novel as an art form and to support the longevity of the writer’s literary career. The winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize intended to allow significant time and resources with which to pursue a subsequent work of fiction.
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 FAQ page.
Featured Winner
Judges: Ramona Ausubel, Jack Livings, Stuart Nadler
Sharks in the Time of Saviors: A Novel, Kawai Strong Washburn (MCD)
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From the judges’ citation: “Kawai Strong Washburn’s Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a precisely observed, deeply humane novel that marries mythology, social and filial folklore, and the visceral realities of a single Hawaiian family teetering between poverty and comfort, disconnection and profound kinship. Washburn’s depictions are wide-ranging yet precise—he writes with equal beauty about gods and basketball, climbing and chemistry, imprisonment and desire. At the center is the luminous exploration of a family’s halting attempts to reconnect with a spirituality lost gradually over time. Sharks in the Time of Saviors offers its reader the unforgettable experience of discovering wonder on the page, both in its careful attention to detail, and also in the way that detail recasts our own reality. The novel reminds its readers that exile is not always geographical, but is, as often, a territory of the mind.”
2021 Finalists
These Ghosts Are Family: A Novel, Maisy Card (Simon & Schuster)
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Luster: A Novel, Raven Leilani (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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Shuggie Bain: A Novel, Douglas Stuart (Grove Press)
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Sharks in the Time of Saviors: A Novel, Kawai Strong Washburn (MCD)
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How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel, C Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books)
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History
2020 Ruchika Tomar for A Prayer for Travelers (Riverhead Books)
2019 Tommy Orange for There There
2016 Ottessa Moshfegh for Eileen
2015 Arna Bontemps Hemenway for Elegy on Kinderklavier
2014 NoViolet Bulawayo for We Need New Names
2013 Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds
2012 Teju Cole for Open City
2011 Brando Skyhorse for The Madonnas of Echo Park
2010 Brigid Pasulka for A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True
2009 Michael Dahlie for A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living
2008 Joshua Ferris for Then We Came to the End
2007 Ben Fountain for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara
2006 Yiyun Li for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
2005 Chris Abani for Graceland
2004 Jennifer Haigh for Mrs. Kimble
2003 George Brownstein for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W
2002 Justin Cronin for Mary and O’Neil
2001 Akhil Sharma for An Obedient Father
2000 Jhumpa Lahiri for Interpreter of Maladies
1999 Rosina Lipini for Homestead
1998 Charlotte Bacon for A Private State
1997 Ha Jin for Ocean of Words
1996 Chang-rae Lee for Native Speaker
1995 Susan Power for The Grass Dancer
1994 Dagobert Gilb for The Magic of Blood
1993 Edward P. Jones for Lost in the City
1992 Louis Begley for Wartime Lies
1991 Bernard Cooper for Maps to Anywhere
1990 Mark Richard for The Ice at the Bottom of the World
1989 Jane Hamilton for The Book of Ruth
1988 Lawrence Thornton for Imagining Argentina
1987 Mary Ward Brown for Tongues of Flame
1986 Alan V. Hewat for Lady’s Time
1985 Josephine Humphreys for Dreams of Sleep
1984 Joan Chase for During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
1983 Bobbie Ann Mason for Shiloh and Other Stories
1982 Marilynne Robinson for Housekeeping
1981 Joan Silber for Household Words
1980 Alan Saperstein for Mom Kills Kids and Self
1979 Reuben Bercovitch for Hasen
1978 Darcy O’Brien for A Way of Life, Like Any Other
1977 Renata Adler for Speedboat
1976 Loyd Little for Parthian Shot
Eligibility
- The work must be a candidate’s absolute first novel and published by a U.S. trade publisher between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. The writer may have previously published books in other genres.
- Eligible books must be written by a single, living author.
- Publishers may submit galleys or manuscripts for consideration if the book is not yet published.
- Candidates must be U.S. residents and/or citizens permanently residing in the United States.
- There are no restrictions on the candidate’s age or on the style of their work as long as it is a full-length work of fiction.
- 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.
- Self-published books are not eligible.
Submission Guidelines
- PEN America will only accept submissions from publishers or literary agents. Authors may not submit their own book for this award.
- On the submission form, please select the award you are submitting to.
- Please submit verified email addresses on the submission form. Your order cannot be processed without an email address, and this information will be used to later contact you regarding your submission.
- Upload a PDF file of the galley or final manuscript on the book submissions form. Following pandemic-related protocols, 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.
- Please download the declaration of eligibility. Complete all fields and have the editor or publisher sign to confirm the book’s eligibility. Please upload this document along with the rest of your application on the submission form.
- Each submission is $85. Please note that due to health concerns surrounding COVID-19, we are asking that all submissions payments be made via credit card. Submission fees are not refundable.
- Submission fees may be waived for publishers whose annual net sales are less than $2 million. In order to have fees waived, have a company official write a letter on company letterhead stating that the press’s annual net sales are less than $2 million. Please send this letter as a PDF attachment to [email protected]. Do not submit before emailing this document to the Literary Awards team, as they 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.
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