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Literary Awards

Literary Awards

 

The PEN Literary Awards are the most comprehensive in the United States. Each year, with the help of its partners and supporters, PEN confers more than $150,000 to writers in the fields of fiction, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, translation, drama, or poetry.

Call for Submissions

Fiction

for an outstanding work of debut fiction

Poetry

for a new and emerging American poet with promise of further literary achievement

Nonfiction

The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay aims to preserve the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.

Drama

A pair of awards from PEN and the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater honor a Grand Master of American Theater and an outstanding new voice.

Translation

for a distinguished book-length prose translation published in 2012

Fiction

The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, invites submissions of book-length writings by authors of color, published in the United States during the current calendar year.

Poetry

The $3,000 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation is conferred every year in New York.

Nonfiction

This biennial prize of $10,000 will go to the author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important...

Nonfiction

The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography is awarded for excellence in the art of biography.

Fiction

The PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship of $5,000 is offered annually to an author of children's or young-adult fiction.

Translation

The PEN/Heim Translation Fund was established in the summer of 2003 by a gift of $730,000 from Priscilla and Michael Henry Heim in response to the dismayingly low number of literary translations...

Nonfiction

The PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award celebrates writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of physical and biological sciences.

Fiction

The PEN/Nora Magid Award, established in 1993, honors a magazine editor whose high literary standards and taste have, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of...

Children's / Young Adult

The PEN/Steven Kroll Award was established in memory of Steven Kroll to acknowledge the distinct literary contributions of picture book writers.

Nonfiction

The $5,000 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing honors a nonfiction book about sports.

Nonfiction

The PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing, which was conferred for the first time in the fall of 2011, is given to one living American or U.S.-based writer each year to...

Featured Award Winners

I remember standing on the porch of our house on Weeks...

My brother Credence says people who leave are deluding...

Abraham Lincoln lay dying in a room full of educated and...

Anyway, he was magnificent. The first expressive gesture...

Terrified at a reading to read / poems about my fears...

Grandfather was supposed to have also started the fire...

But somehow piano lessons began to be heard. People...

A lot of fault-finding non-Catholics run around saying...

The interior eye / Opposite watching’s touch / In what...

One thing I didn’t remember to think about is nothing...

Sometimes the United States is worthy of the respect to...

Here was a messaging system that outpaced the best...

There you sit / in the same skirt in which, waters ago...

Maude stands in the entrance, wearing a blue bonnet on...

Her rejection as a child helps to explain her constant...

One by one I began to rip off in chips the made-up skin...

The arms dealer’s wife joined us soon after we sat down...

Writing by Past Winners

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TRANSLATION

NONFICTION

FICTION

POETRY