The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announces that David Means has been selected as the winner of the 2025 PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Given since 1988 in honor of the late Bernard Malamud, the award recognizes writers who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form.
“David Means has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the short story form throughout his decades-long career,” said Malamud Committee Chair Jung Yun. “His six collections to date serve to remind readers how finely observed, emotionally compelling, and formally inventive a short story can be, particularly in the hands of a craftsperson like Means who possesses such a clear understanding of the powers and pleasures of the form. Like Bernard Malamud himself, he packs ‘a self or two into a few pages, predicating lifetimes,’ leaving readers with memories of small, profoundly human moments that are difficult to forget.”
David Means is the author of six short-story collections, including Two Nurses, Smoking; Instructions for a Funeral; The Spot—a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Assorted Fire Events—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Secret Goldfish. His novel Hystopia was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. A Guggenheim Fellow and three-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and many other publications. He is a professor at Vassar College.
“I’m deeply honored to receive the PEN/Malamud Award–to be associated with Bernard Malamud and to stand alongside so many practitioners of the short story form,” said Means. “The short story feels intrinsic to the human condition, as natural as drinking water or sharing love. It’s a singular tool for probing the human experience, illuminating the universals of who we are. The form also feels especially suited to exploring the nature of life in the United States: a country vast and varied, best captured in the precise, revealing glimpses stories can offer. I’m profoundly grateful to the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and the PEN/Malamud Award committee for their support of the short story in these trying times.”
Last year’s winner was Ted Chiang. Recent winners include Edwidge Danticat, Yiyun Li, Charles Baxter, Lydia Davis, John Edgar Wideman, Amina Gautier, Joan Silber, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Joy Williams.
About the art of the short story, Bernard Malamud once said, “I like packing a self or two into a few pages, predicting lifetimes. The drama is terse, happens faster, and is often outlandish. A short story is a way of indicating the complexity of life in a few pages, producing the surprise and effect of a profound knowledge in a short time.”
Means will be honored at the annual PEN/Malamud Award Ceremony, held in partnership with American University, in December. Ticket information for the ceremony, which will be open to the public, will be available this fall.