2015 PEN Literary Award Winners Make Great Recommendations

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PEN American Center has announced the winners of its 2015 PEN Literary Awards, which encompass a range of genres from fiction, poetry, and biography to science writing, translation, and drama.

Click through to the individual awards pages below to read the judges’ citations for all books being honored in 2015. Judges’ citations can act as a useful guide for bookseller recommendations.

The 2015 Pen Literary Award winners, announced on Friday, May 8, are:

PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award ($10,000): For a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of the physical or biological sciences published in 2014.

  • War of the Whales: A True Story, Joshua Horwitz (Simon & Schuster)

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000): To an author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues which has been published in 2013 or 2014.

  • Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Sheri Fink (Crown)

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($5,000): For a distinguished biography published in 2014.

  • The Queen’s Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court, Anna Whitelock (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): To honor a nonfiction book on the subject of sports published in 2014.

  • Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard, John Branch (W.W. Norton & Company)

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000): For a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2014.

  • I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan; translated from the Pashto by Eliza Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000): For a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2014.

  • Baboon, by Naja Marie Aidt; translated from the Danish by Denise Newman (Two Lines Press)

2015 Career Achievement Awards

PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards: Three awards which honor a Master American Dramatist, American Playwright in Mid-Career, and Emerging American Playwright.

PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry ($5,000): For an emerging American poet showing promise of further literary achievement.

  • Saeed Jones for Prelude to Bruis (Coffee House Press)

PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000): To an author of children’s or young adult fiction to complete a book-length work-in-progress.

  • Stephanie Kuehn for The Pragmatist (Forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin Books)

PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): To a writer whose body of work represents an exceptional contribution to the field.

  • Bob Ryan

PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing ($2,500): For a magazine editor whose high literary taste has, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits.

  • Rob Spillman for Tin House

PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation: For a translator whose career has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of his or her work.

  • Burton Watson

The winners of the Debut Fiction, Art of the Essay, and Open Book awards will be announced at the 2015 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on June 8.

Finalists for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000) for an author whose debut work — a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2014 — represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise are:

  • The UnAmericans, Molly Antopol (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • Ruby, Cynthia Bond (Hogarth)
  • Redeployment, Phil Klay (Penguin Press)
  • The Dog, Jack Livings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
  • Love Me Back, Merritt Tierce (Doubleday)

Finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000) for a book of essays published in 2014 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem the essay form imparts to literature are:

  • Moral Imagination, David Bromwich (Princeton University Press)
  • Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadow of War, Ian Buruma (New York Review Books)
  • Loitering: New and Collected Essays, Charles D’Ambrosio (Tin House Books)
  • The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison (Graywolf Press)
  • Limber, Angela Pelster (Sarabande Books)

Finalists for the PEN Open Book Award ($5,000) for an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2014 are:

  • An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine (Grove Press)
  • Every Day Is for the Thief, Teju Cole (Random House)
  • An Untamed State, Roxane Gay (Black Cat)
  • Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press)
  • The City Son, Samrat Upadhyay (Soho Press)

The winner of the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize ($10,000), for a promising young writer under the age of 35 for an unpublished work of nonfiction that addresses a global and/or multicultural issue, and recipients of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants ($2,000 – $4,000), to support the translation of book-length works into English, will be announced later this month.


The PEN Literary Awards Ceremony will be held on Monday, June 8, 2015, at The New School’s Auditorium in New York City.

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