Genre: Fiction

PEN America Announces Finalists for 2019 Literary Awards

This morning PEN America announced the finalists for its 2019 Literary Awards, which showcase the best books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translation published in the previous year. More than $370,000 in prize money will be awarded to the winning writers, who will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on February 26. This year more than 50 percent of the finalists are debut writers and authors published by small presses.

The $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award recognizes a book-length work in any genre. The 2019 finalists are Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for Friday Black (Mariner Books), Ada Limón for The Carrying (Milkweed Editions), José Olivarez for Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books), Richard Powers for The Overstory (Norton), and Tara Westover for Educated (Random House).

The finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Award, which includes $25,000 and a residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, are Akwaeke Emezi for Freshwater (Grove Press), Meghan Kenny for The Driest Season (Norton), Ling Ma for Severance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Tommy Orange for There There (Knopf), and Nico Walker for Cherry (Knopf).

The PEN/Bingham Prize, which was previously awarded for a first book of fiction, will now be awarded for a debut story collection. The finalists for the $25,000 award are Chaya Bhuvaneswar for White Dancing Elephants (Dzanc Books), Jamel Brinkley for A Lucky Man (Graywolf Press), Helen DeWitt for Some Trick (New Directions), Akil Kumarasamy for Half Gods (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Will Mackin for Bring Out the Dog (Random House).

The PEN Open Book Award, worth $5,000, will be conferred to an author of color for a book-length work of any genre. The finalists are Shauna Barbosa for Cape Verdean Blues (University of Pittsburgh Press), Tyrese Coleman for How to Sit: A Memoir in Stories and Essays (Mason Jar Press), Ángel García for Teeth Never Sleep (University of Arkansas Press), Nafissa Thompson-Spires for Heads of the Colored People (Atria), and Jenny Xie for Eye Level (Graywolf Press).

The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is given to a collection of essays that exemplify the form. The finalists for the $10,000 award are Jabari Asim for We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival (Picador), Alexander Chee for How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Brian Phillips for Impossible Owls (FSG Originals), Zadie Smith for Feel Free (Penguin Press), and Michelle Tea for Against Memoir (Feminist Press).

Visit the website for a complete list of finalists, including those for PEN awards in nonfiction, biography, translation, poetry in translation, and literary science writing.

Established in 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards have honored hundreds of writers. Layli Long Soldier, Jenny Zhang, and Alexis Okeowo were among the 2018 winners.

The Fever of First Love

1.23.19

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say,” writes Daphne du Maurier in her 1938 Gothic novel, Rebecca. First love between characters who meet and bond at a young age has often been depicted in literature as feverish obsession sustained over the course of many years. Consider the monstrously toxic romance between Catherine and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and the fifty-plus-year separation of lovers in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Write a story that revolves around a character’s experience of first love. Explore your character’s perceptions of love and how they evolve over time.

Ten Questions for Juliet Lapidos

by Staff
1.22.19

“I think a lot of contemporary editors, myself included, push too much for clarity when sometimes a little muddiness is just the thing.” —Juliet Lapidos, author of Talent

If Beale Street Could Talk

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James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk has been adapted into a feature film directed by Barry Jenkins. Starring Stephan James, Regina King, and KiKi Layne, the film follows a young woman in 1970s Harlem attempting to prove her fiancé’s innocence when he is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.

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The Water Cure

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Sophie Mackintosh reads from her debut novel, The Water Cure (Doubleday, 2019), at Waterstones bookstore and talks about being influenced by Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides, Yorgos Lanthimos’s film Dogtooth, Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the recent sociopolitical climate.

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Yiyun Li

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“What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self.” Yiyun Li reads from her debut memoir, Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life (Random House, 2017), in this video produced by the Office of Communications at Princeton University. Li, whose novel Where Reasons End is forthcoming from Random House in February, is featured in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Life-Changing Stories

1.16.19

“The stories that we tell ourselves and the stories we learn from others are a matter of life and death. Literature has the ability to literally change our minds—to change how we act, how we grow, what we believe, how we vote, how and when we speak,” says Morgan Parker in “Portraits of Inspiration” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Write a short story that revolves around a subject, topic, issue, or idea that feels intensely important, urgent, or vital to you. How can you create a character that becomes a source of empathy for what matters to you?

George R. R. Martin on Stan Lee

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“A story or a character should change. The events that happen change us.” George R. R. Martin, whose book Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (Bantam, 2018) is a history of the Targaryen family from his fantasy novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, talks to John Hodgman about how the realness in Stan Lee’s comic books influenced him as a writer.

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