In December, we announced the longlists of the 2017 PEN America literary awards. The lists of finalists are now out, and thankfully, a few of our favorite authors are still in the running.
Teju Cole has emerged a finalist in two different categories. He is up for both the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
Petina Gappah and Yaa Gyasi are also shortlisted for their respective novels, The Book of Memory and Homegoing, as is Helen Oyeyemi for her short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. Gyasi is a finalist for the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction while Gappah and Oyeyemi are in the running for the $5,000 PEN/Open Book Award.
Cole makes history as the first author to be selected finalist in two awards. No one has had that privilege in PEN America’s 54-year existence. Traditionally, publishers are allowed to submit a book in only one category. But the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award is set up differently. Since it is not open for submissions and is, instead, based on nomination by the panel of judges, it is a standalone prize. As a result, finalists of the prize can also be finalists in any one of the other categories.
The PEN/Jean Stein Book Award is in its maiden edition and is designed to “recognize a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact.” Teju is now up against four other authors: Tyehimba Jess for Olio; Hisham Matar for The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between; Jane Mayer for Dark Money; and Colson Whitehead for The Underground Railroad.
The 2017 PEN America awards season will be the organization’s biggest yet, conferring 19 different awards, fellowships and grants for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, playwriting and translation to the tune of $315,000.
Below is full list of finalists as announced on the organization’s website.
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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 2016—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise of a second work of literary fiction.
FINALISTS:
Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott
We Show What We Have Learned by Clare Beams
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Hurt People by Cote Smith
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000):
“For a book of essays published in 2016 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.”
FINALISTS:
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood by Belle Boggs
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and The Mind by Siri
Hustvedt
The Girls in My Town by Angela Morales
Becoming Earth by Eva Saulitis
PEN Open Book Award ($5,000):
For an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2016.
FINALISTS:
The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah
The Big Book of Exit Strategies by Jamaal May
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
Look by Solmaz Sharif
Blackacre by Monica Youn
Congratulations to them all. Big congratulations to Teju Cole for this remarkable feat.
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