PEN America Literary Awards Longlist

PEN America has announced their 2022 Longlist. The awards “will confer over $350,000 to writers and translators. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, translation, and more, these Longlisted books are dynamic, diverse, and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence.” There are 11 awards, each announcing their long lists.

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

Judges: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Angie Cruz, Maurice Manning, Steph Opitz

  • The Trees, Percival Everett (Graywolf Press)
  • Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, Rivka Galchen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • Palmares, Gayl Jones (Beacon Press)
  • Harrow, Joy Williams (Knopf)

Pen Open Book Award ($10,000)

Judges: Jaquira Díaz, Rigoberto González, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Khadijah Queen

  • No Gods, No Monsters, Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone Publishing)

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection ($25,000)

Judges: Ling Ma, Manuel Muñoz, Oscar Villalon

  • The Rock Eaters, Brenda Peynado, (Penguin Books)

PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel ($10,000)

Judges: Zeyn Joukhadar, Téa Obreht, Daniel Torday

  • The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Harper)
  • Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters (One World)
  • Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder (Doubleday)

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($15,000)

Judges: Jason DeParle, Hua Hsu, Marilynne Robinson

  • Cranial Fracking, Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
  • Languages of Truth, Salman Rushdie (Random House)
  • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, George Saunders (Random House)

PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection ($5,000)

Judges: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Lia Purpura, Safiya Sinclair

  • Pilgrim Bell, Kaveh Akbar (Graywolf Press)
  • Sho, Douglas Kearney (Wave Books)

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)

Judges: Almiro Andrade, Mayada Ibrahim, Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, Sharon E. Rhodes

  • The Divorce, César Aira, translated by Chris Andrews (New Directions)
  • I’m in Seattle, Where Are You?, Mortada Gzar, translated by William Hutchins (Amazon Crossing)
  • New Year, Juli Zeh, translated by Alta L. Price (World Editions)
  • Faraway, Lo Yi-Chin, translated by Jeremy Tiang (Columbia University Press)

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

Judges: Jonathan Safran Foer, Michele Harper, Lauren Redniss

  • Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade, Nathaniel Rich (MCD)

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

Judges: Luke Dittrich, Paul Golob, Imani Perry

  • Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

For the full longlist, see the PEN America announcement.


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