2016 PEN Literary Award Winners Make Great Recommendations

PEN American Center has announced the winners of its 2016 PEN Literary Awards, which encompass a range of genres from fiction, poetry, and biography to science writing, translation, and drama. This year’s full roster of awards will confer over $200,000 to writers and translators.

Click through to the individual awards pages below to read the judges’ citations for all books being honored in 2016. Judges’ citations can act as a useful guide for bookseller recommendations.

The 2016 Pen Literary Award winners, announced on Tuesday, March 1, are:

PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction ($25,000): For a distinguished living American author of fiction.

• Toni Morrison

PEN/Bellwether Award for Socially Engaged Fiction, founded by Barbara Kingsolver ($25,000): For a writer of fiction that addresses issues of social justice.

• The Leavers, Lisa Ko (Forthcoming from Algonquin Books)

PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards ($7,500 and $2,500): Three awards which honor a Grand Master of American Theater, playwright in mid-career and emerging playwright.

•  Master American Dramatist: Lynn Nottage
• American Playwright in Mid-career: Young Jean Lee
• Emerging American Playwright: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): To honor a nonfiction book on the subject of sports published in 2015.

• Scott Ellsworth for The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph (Little, Brown, & Company)

PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): For a writer a lifetime of writing about sports and its dimensions of character and action.

• John Schulian

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($5,000): For a distinguished biography published in 2015.

• Nancy Princenthal for Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (Thames & Hudson)

PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000) For an author of an unpublished work of children’s or young adult fiction.

• Ash Parsons for A Chemical Distance (Available for publication)

PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry ($5,000): For a poet whose distinguished and growing body of work to date represents a notable accomplishment in American literature.

• Ed Roberson

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000): For a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2015.

• The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector, Translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson (New Directions)

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000): For a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2015.

• The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu (Canarium Books)

PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature ($3,000) For a living author of a major work of Paraguayan literature.

•  Nathalia María Echauri Castagnino for Doce Lunas Llenas: Poesias sobre la Divina Energia Femenin

The winners of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants ($2,000-$4,000) to promote world literature translated into English will be announced later this spring. The winners of the following five awards will be announced at the 2016 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on April 11.

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000): To an author whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2015—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.

Shortlist:

• In the Country: Stories, Mia Alvar (Alfred A. Knopf)
• The Turner House, Angela Flournoy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, Julie Iromuanya (Coffee House Press)
• The Sympathizer: A Novel, Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
• Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness, Jennifer Tseng (Europa Editions)

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000): For a book of essays published in 2015 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.

Shortlist:

• After the Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction, Renata Adler (New York Review Books), 
• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau/Random House)
• The Quarry, Susan Howe (New Directions)
• The Givenness of Things: Essays, Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 
• Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, David L. Ulin (University of California Press)

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 2015.

Shortlist:

• Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, Cynthia Barnett (Crown)
• The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World, Joel K. Bourne Jr. (W. W. Norton)
• The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting, and How to Make a Star, Tom Clynes (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future, Lauren Redniss (Random House)
• Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World, Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe (Pegasus Books)

PEN Open Book Award ($5,000): For an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2015.

Shortlist:

• Chord, Rick Barot (Sarabande Books)
• Bastards of the Reagan Era, Reginald Dwayne Betts (Four Way Books)
• Forest Primeval: Poems, Vievee Francis (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern)
• Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey, Marie Mutsuki Mockett (W. W. Norton)
• Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, Lauret Savoy (Counterpoint)

PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize ($10,000) For a promising young writer of an unpublished work of nonfiction that addresses a global and/or multi-cultural issue.