2023 PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration
Thursday, May 11, 2023
6 pm: cocktails, 7 pm: award celebration, 8 pm: dinner
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library
Cocktail Attire
An Event to Remember for Contemporary Fiction Lovers
Our 43nd Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration on May 11, 2023 honored this year’s distinguished books and authors. This exquisite literary evening featured presentations by our judges; original readings by our winner and four finalists; and a celebration of Terry Gross, our 2023 PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion.
HONOREES
PEN/Faulkner Award Winner
Yiyun Li
PEN/Faulkner Award Finalists
Jonathan Escoffery
Kathryn Harlan
Dionne Irving
Laura Warrell
PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion
Terry Gross
SPECIAL GUESTS
2023 Judges
Christopher Bollen
R. O. Kwon
Tiphanie Yanique
Master of Ceremonies
Ron Charles
Featured Speaker
Michel Martin
CO-CHAIRS
Elliot Ackerman & Lea Carpenter
Katherine Boone & Joshua Geltzer
CELEBRATION TEAM
Anonymous
Marie Arana & Jonathan Yardley
Jabari & Liana Asim
Louis Bayard & Don Montuori
Bloomsbury
Katherine & David Bradley
The Honorable Ann Brown
Catapult
Lauren Cerand
Susan Coll & Paul Goldberg
East City Bookshop
The Efrein Foundation
Molly Elkin & Ivan Wasserman
Lauren Francis-Sharma & Anand Sharma
The Garcia Family Spotlight Foundation
CELEBRATION TEAM
Renée & Stephen Gardner
Susan Ginsburg & Mario Velasquez
Ginny Grenham & Paul Zevnik
Patricia Griffith
Mary & Robert Haft
Linette S. Hwu
Ingram Content Group
The Ivy Bookshop
Jonathan & Laura Kravis
Willee & Finlay Lewis
Lost City Books
Loyalty Bookstores
Sophia McCrocklin & William Isaacson
The Honorable Mary Mochary
Neon Literary
Erich Parker & Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Malcolm & Virginia O’Hagan
John & Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Politics & Prose
CELEBRATION TEAM
Jane Evans Ramsay
Susan Shaffer Rappaport
Adrianna Smith Reig & Paz
Relegation Books
Lucy S. Rhame
Jojo Ruf & David Krum
RY CPAs
Bari Schwartz & Barry Hager
Eileen Shields-West & John Robinson West
Shreve Williams Public Relations
Joan H. Simmons
Clay Smith & Tomás Rivera
Karen & Bill Sonneborn
Deborah Tannen & Michael Macovski
Martha Anne Toll & Daniel Becker
Katharine Weymouth
J. Gregory Whitehead
Catherine Wyler & Richard Rymland
Jung Yun & Joel Anderson
*This list is current as of May 8, 2023.
Our 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award Winner and Finalists
Ghostroots
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalist ’Pemi Aguda is an MFA graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her writing has been published in Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, and other publications, and has been awarded the O. Henry...
Behind You Is the Sea
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistSusan Muaddi Darraj is the author of American Book Award–winner A Curious Land and was a finalist for a Palestine Book Award. A United States Artists’ Ford Fellow and past winner of the Maryland State Arts Council’s...
James
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistPercival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker...
Small Rain
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction WinnerGarth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, Cleanness, and Small Rain. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, among other journals, and his nonfiction has appeared widely, including...
Colored Television
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistDanzy Senna is the bestselling author of six previous books, including Caucasia, New People, and most recently Colored Television. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she teaches writing at the University of...
OUR 2023 PEN/FAULKNER LITERARY CHAMPION
Terry Gross
Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, the daily program of interviews and reviews. It is produced at WHYY in Philadelphia, where Gross began hosting the show in 1975, when it was broadcast locally. Her interviews with leading writers, actors, directors, musicians, comics, journalists, scholars, and others now reach 4.9 million people weekly, on 659 NPR stations across the U.S. and Europe. Fresh Air was the most downloaded podcast on Apple Podcasts in 2015, 2016, and 2017.
MASTER OF CEREMONIES
Ron Charles
Ron Charles writes about books and publishing for The Washington Post. For a dozen years, he enjoyed teaching American literature and critical theory in the Midwest. Before moving to the District, he edited the books section of the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. His wife is an English teacher and the cinematographer of their satirical series, “The Totally Hip Video Book Review.” His awards include the Louis Shores Award for reviewing from the American Library Association, the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle, and First Place for Arts & Entertainment Commentary from the Society for Features Journalism in 2011. He was one of three jurors for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
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Unit #1062
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