We are thrilled to announce the longlist of books for the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction:
- Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)
- Brother Brontë by Fernando A. Flores (MCD)
- The Devil Is a Southpaw by Brandon Hobson (Ecco)
- The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes (One World)
- The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Heart the Lover by Lily King (Grove Press)
- Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore (Tin House)
- An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park (Random House)
- Small Scale Sinners by Mahreen Sohail (A Public Space Books)
“The complexities and richness of this year’s list reflect the serious concerns of many American readers—legacy, familial connection, corruption, and the plight of men and our youth—all while offering an abundance of hope, a bounty of beauty, and heaps of tenderness,” said PEN/Faulkner Awards Committee Chair Lauren Francis-Sharma.
In selecting the longlist, this year’s judges—Samantha Hunt, Tania James, and De’Shawn Charles Winslow—considered 387 eligible novels and short story collections by American authors published in the US during the 2025 calendar year. Submissions came from 155 publishing houses, including small and academic presses.
From this longlist, the judges will select five finalists for the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Those finalists will be announced in early March. The winning book—the “first among equals,” selected from among the five finalists—will be announced in April. The authors of the five finalist books will be honored at the PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration, which will be held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on May 6.
ABOUT OUR 2026 JUDGES
Samantha Hunt is the author of five books, including The Seas, The Unwritten Book, and The Dark Dark. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her writing has been translated into thirteen languages. Hunt won a Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches at Pratt Institute.
Tania James is the author of four works of fiction, most recently Loot (Knopf), which was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award and the Carol Shields Prize. Her short stories have appeared in Freeman’s; Granta; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; and One Story, among other places. A 2025 Guggenheim fellow in fiction, she lives in Washington DC.
De’Shawn Charles Winslow is the author of Decent People and In West Mills, which was a Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner, an American Book Award recipient, and a Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction winner, as well as a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Publishing Triangle Award. He was born and raised in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He currently lives in New Jersey.
ABOUT THE PEN/FAULKNER FOUNDATION
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation champions the breadth and power of fiction in America. We are dedicated to the idea that fiction creates empathy within and among communities and advances civil discourse. American culture thrives when stories from diverse perspectives enrich our lives. To further these ideals, we cultivate a vibrant landscape for writers and readers of fiction both locally and nationally.