Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction. Winners. Shortlists. Historic

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, administered by the Folger Shakespeare Library, was established in 1980 by writers to honor their peers.

The award is named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize funds to create an award for young writers, and PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists), the international writers' organization.

The award judges, who are themselves writers of fiction, each read more than 250 novels and short story collections published during the calendar year before selecting five outstanding books.

The author of the book designated the winner receives $15,000; each of the other nominees receives $5,000.

Pen/Faulkner Winners 1986 to present at Amazon

PEN/Faulkner Winner for 2008 Steps up with Satirical Gem

From Lindsay Irvine of guardian.co.uk
Friday March 14, 2008

An author, initially marked as a purveyor of chick lit, has won one of the US's most prestigious literary prizes. Kate Christensen (right photo credit Marion Ettlinger)took the 2008 PEN/Faulkner award for her novel The Great Man. She is only the fifth woman to win in the prize's 28-year history.

The novel follows the stories of three women left behind when a famous painter, whose career they have supported, dies. It was described by Molly Giles, one of the three judges, as "intelligent, consistently entertaining, and original." Another judge, Victor LaSalle praised the characterization of the protagonists, "defiant, infuriating and alive. And that's what you ask of literature."

The Great Man is New York author Christensen's fourth novel. In the Drink: A Novel , her first, came out in 2000 to warm reviews that nonetheless filed it away as chick lit. "It gave me something to prove," the writer told the Washington Post. Securing the PEN/Faulkner - whose previous winners include Philip Roth and John Updike, means that she can gratefully shrug off that tag for good. Hearing the news whilst doing the laundry at her Brooklyn home she was, she told the Post, very shocked. An award like this"always seemed unattainable ... I was like, 'do women actually win this thing?"

Product Description
Oscar Feldman, the renowned figurative painter, has passed away. As his obituary notes, Oscar is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son, Ethan, and his sister, the well-known abstract painter Maxine Feldman. What the obituary does not note, however, is that Oscar is also survived by his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their daughters.

As two biographers interview the women in an attempt to set the record straight, the open secret of his affair reaches a boiling point and a devastating skeleton threatens to come to light. From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a scintillating novel of secrets, love, and legacy in the New York art world.

Kate Christensen on Winning the PEN/Faulkner award on Critical Mass

2008 Shortlisted titles

The four other books shortlisted for the prize from some 300 entrants, were Pulitzer winner Annie Dillard's The Maytrees, David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk: A Novel, and two collections of short stories: The Gateway: Stories by TM McNally and Chemistry and Other Stories by Ron Rash.

The PEN/Faulkner organization was originally set up with money donated by William Faulkner from his Nobel prize winnings. As winner, Christensen now carries off $15,000, with $1,000 each going to the other shortlisted authors.

Annie Dillard's The Maytrees Link to Annie Dillard's website

Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar dillard-annie Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.

In spare, elegant prose, Dillard (right) traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes up painting. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk.

In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts nature's vastness and nearness. She presents willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Annie Dillard's original body of work.

Click on book cover above for reviews about The Maytrees

David Leavitt's (right) The Indian Clerk: A Novel, leavitt_david

The brilliant new novel from one of our most respected writers—his most ambitious and accessible to date.

On a January morning in 1913, G. H. Hardy—eccentric, charismatic and, at thirty-seven, already considered the greatest British mathematician of his age—receives in the mail a mysterious envelope covered with Indian stamps. Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self-professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of solving the most important unsolved mathematical problem of all time. Some of his Cambridge colleagues dismiss the letter as a hoax, but Hardy becomes convinced that the Indian clerk who has written it—Srinivasa Ramanujan—deserves to be taken seriously. Aided by his collaborator, Littlewood, and a young don named Neville who is about to depart for Madras with his wife,Alice, he determines to learn more about the mysterious Ramanujan and, if possible, persuade him to come to Cambridge. It is a decision that will profoundly affect not only his own life, and that of his friends, but the entire history of mathematics.

Based on the remarkable true story of the strange and ultimately tragic relationship between an esteemed British mathematician and an unknown—and unschooled—mathematical genius, and populated with such luminaries such as D. H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Indian Clerk takes this extraordinary slice of history and transforms it into an emotional and spell-binding story about the fragility of human connection and our need to find order in the world.

The Gateway: Stories by TM McNally (left)

"Lordy, what a wickedly wise writer T. M. McNally is. The Gateway is a terrific book, impatient and wrought up, a book that goes a long way toward answering this age-old question: Why do fools fall in love? Here are seven answers, each beguiling and break-neck and bedeviling."--Lee K. Abbott

"McNally writes from the inside out. These dramatic contemplations on the radical ways we connect in families show his remarkable vision. In prose at once fierce and elegiac, these powerful stories compose a careful and rueful celebration of our times."--Ron Carlson

"Uncommonly dense, complex, and well-made, these stories are vaultingly ambitious, featuring a wide range of character and milieu. McNally's recurring interests are tricky relationships with fathers, with God; infidelity (on many levels); an obsession with history (especially World War II); generational legacy/burden/shadow. Eliot said, `But there's no vocabulary/For the love within a family./This love is silent.' The Gateway, in what seems to me a minor miracle, finds the words."--David Shields

"McNally is a contemporary American writer in that he is completely unsentimental and accustomed to irony; but he is a rare writer for our times in that his work contains a genuine wistfulness for gentler times, gentler connections between husbands, wives, and children. It is the wistfulness of diminished expectations without a loss of hope."--Tracy Daugherty

McNally's subject in the seven stories in this, his third story collection, is love, always love. Click on book cover above for reviews about The Gateway:Stories

Chemistry and Other Stories by Ron Rash (left).
From the pre-eminent chronicler of this forgotten territory, stories that range over one hundred years in the troubled, violent emergence of the New South.

In Ron Rash's stories, spanning the entire twentieth century in Appalachia, rural communities struggle with the arrival of a new era.

Three old men stalk the shadow of a giant fish no one else believes is there. A man takes up scuba diving in the town reservoir to fight off a killing depression. A grieving mother leads a surveyor into the woods to name once and for all the county where her son was murdered by thieves.

In the Appalachia of Ron Rash's stories, the collision of the old and new south, of antique and modern, resonate with the depth and power of ancient myths.

2007 AWARD WINNER
Philip-Roth Philip Roth, Everyman

2007 FINALISTS
Charles D’Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum: Stories
Deborah Eisenberg, Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories
Amy Hempel,The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children: Stories

Reviews of Everyman by Philip Roth

New Yorker Review by Gail Caldwell

London Times Review by Peter Kemp

Washington Post Review by Norman Rush

Pen/Faulkner Winners and Shortlists 1981-2006 (Book first in each year Winner)

2006
E.L. Doctorow, The March: A Novel - Winner
Karen Fisher, A Sudden Country: A Novel
William Henry Lewis, I Got Somebody in Staunton: Stories
James Salter, Last Night
Bruce Wagner, The Chrysanthemum Palace

2005
Ha Jin, War Trash - Winner
Jerome Charyn, The Green Lantern: A Romance of Stalinist Russia
Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead: A Novel
Steve Yarbrough, Prisoners of War

2004
John Updike, The Early Stories- Winner
1953–1975 Browse John Updike's Books
Frederick Barthemle, Elroy Nights
ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore
Tobias Wolff, Old School

2003
Sabina Murray, The Caprices- Winner
Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination
William Kennedy, Roscoe
Victor LaValle, The Ecstatic
Gilbert Sorrentino, Little Casino

2002
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto (P.S.)- Winner
Karen Joy Fowler, Sister Noon
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections: A Novel
Claire Messud, The Hunters
Manil Suri, The Death of Vishnu: A Novel

2001
Philip Roth, The Human Stain: A Novel- Winner
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Millicent Dillon, Harry Gold
Denis Johnson, The Name of the World: A Novel
Mona Simpson, Off Keck Road: A Novella

2000
Ha Jin, Waiting: A Novel- Winner
Frederick Busch, The Night Inspector (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
Ken Kalfus, Pu-239 And Other Russian Fantasies
Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle: A novel
Lily Tuck, Siam: Or the Woman Who Shot a Man (Sewanee Writers' Series)

1999
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter
Barbara Kingsolver, The
Poisonwood Bible
Brian Morton, Starting Out in
the Evening
Richard Selzer, The Doctor Stories

1998
Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home
Donald Antrim, The Hundred Brothers
Rilla Askew, The Mercy Seat
Mary Gaitskill, Because They
Wanted To
Francisco Goldman, The Ordinary
Seaman

1997
Gina Berriault, Women in their Beds
Daniel Akst, St. Burl’s Obituary
Kathleen Cambor, The Book of Mercy
Ron Hansen, Atticus
Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography
of My Mother

1996
Richard Ford, Independence Day
Madison Smart Bell, All Souls’ Rising
William Gass, The Tunnel
Claire Messud, When the World
Was Steady
J. Verdelle, The Good Negress

1995
David Guterson, Snow Falling
on Cedars
Frederich Busch, The Children in
the Woods
Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River
Joyce Carol Oates, What I Lived For
Joanna Scott, Various Antidotes

1994
Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
Stanley Elkin, Van Gogh’s Room
at Arles
Dagoberto Gilb, The Magic of Blood
Fae Myenne Ng, Bone
Kate Wheeler, Not Where I
Started From

1993
E. Annie Proulx, Postcards
Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent
from a Strange Mountain
Francisco Goldman, The Long Night
of White Chickens
Maureen Howard, Natural History
Sylvia Watanabe, Talking to
the Dead

1992
Don DeLillo, Mao II
Stephen Dixon, Frog
Paul Gervais, Extraordinary People
Allan Gurganus, White People
Bradford Morrow, The
Almanac Branch

1991
John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
Paul Auster, The Music of Chance
Joanne Meschery, A Gentleman”s
Guide to the Frontier
Steven Millhauser, The Barnum
Museum
Joanna Scott, Arrogance

1990
E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate
Russell Banks, Affliction
Molly Gloss, The Jump-Off Creek
Josephine Jacobsen, On the Island
Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Leaving
Brooklyn

1989
James Salter, Dusk
Mary McGarry Morris, Vanished
Thomas Savage, The Corner of Rife
and Pacific
Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Death
of Methuselah

1988
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World’s End
Richard Bausch, Spirits
Alice McDermott, That Night
Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah
of Stockholm
Lawrence Thornton, Imagining
Argentina

1987
Richard Wiley, Soldiers in Hiding
Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
Charles Johnson, The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Janet Kauffman, Collaborators
Maureen Howard, Expensive Habits

1986
Peter Taylor, The Old Forest
William Gaddis, Carpenter’s Gothic
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
Hugh Nissenson, The Tree of Life
Helen Norris, The Christmas Wife
Grace Paley, Later the Same Day

1985
Tobias Wolff, The Barracks Thief
Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
Donald Hays, The Dixie Association
David Leavitt, Family Dancing
James Purdy, On Glory’s Courses

1984
John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday
Ron Hansen, The Assasination of
Jesse James by the Coward
Robert Ford
William Kennedy, Ironweed
Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of
the River
Bernard Malamud, The Stories
Cynthia Ozick, The Cannibal Galaxy

1983
Toby Olson, Seaview
Maureen Howard, Grace Abounding
Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and
Other Stories
George Steiner, The Portage to San
Cristobal of A.H.
Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick
Restaurant
William S. Wilson, Birthplace

1982
David Bradley, The
Chaneysville Incident
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
Richard Bausch, Take Me Back
Mark Helprin, Ellis Island and
Other Stories
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise

1981
Walter Abish, How German Is It?
Shirley Hazzard, The Transit
of Venus
Walker Percy, The Second Coming
Gilbert Sorrentino, Aberration of
Starlight
John Kennedy Toole, A
Confederacy of Dunces
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PEN/Faulkner Winner for 2008 Steps up with Satirical Gem

2007 AWARD WINNER Philip-Roth Philip Roth, Everyman

Reviews of Everyman by Philip Roth

Pen/Faulkner Winners and Shortlists 1981-2006 (Book first in each year Winner)

2007 AWARD WINNER
Philip-Roth Philip Roth, Everyman