PEN/Faulkner Award Longlist, Past

The Mighty Red

The Mighty Red

Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionLouise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Erdrich lives in...

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Creation Lake

Creation Lake

Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller Creation Lake, her latest novel; The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection; and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The...

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There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven

Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRuben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants and the author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard College, his writing has appeared in The Boston Globe,...

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The History of Sound

The History of Sound

Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionBen Shattuck is the author of Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, which was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of Spring, a New York Times Best Book of Summer, a New...

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Devil Is Fine

Devil Is Fine

Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionJohn Vercher lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and two sons. He has a BA in English from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in creative writing from the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program....

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What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez

What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez

2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction WinnerClaire Jiménez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York. She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019) and What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez...

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Witness

Witness

2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistJamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. His work...

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The Guest

The Guest

Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionEmma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John...

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Monica

Monica

Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionDaniel Clowes is an acclaimed American cartoonist, illustrator, and screenwriter. He gained fame with his comic book series Eightball, which was notable for its dark humor and commentary on modern culture. Clowes'...

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Open Throat

Open Throat

2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistHenry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and a writer whose work has appeared in No Tokens, Triangle House, Electric Literature, and the flash noir anthology Tiny Crimes. He co-created the performance series Enter>text in...

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The Best Possible Experience

The Best Possible Experience

Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionNishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michi­gan. He received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award from the...

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Biography of X

Biography of X

Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New...

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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionJames McBride is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Oprah’s Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels...

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Absolution

Absolution

2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistAlice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the Pulitzer...

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Users

Users

2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistCOLIN WINNETTE’s books include Coyote, Haints Stay, and The Job of the Wasp, which was an American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next Pick. Winnette’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Playboy,...

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The Book of Goose

The Book of Goose

2023 PEN/Faulkner Award WinnerYiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in...

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If I Survive You

If I Survive You

2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistJonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review,...

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Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistLaura Warrell is a contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and is a graduate of the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in HuffPost,...

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Invisible Things

Invisible Things

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionMat Johnson is a Philip H. Knight Chair of the Humanities at the University of Oregon. His publications include the novels Loving Day and Pym, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the graphic novel...

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Self-Portrait with Ghost

Self-Portrait with Ghost

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionMeng Jin the author of Little Gods, a finalist for both the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in...

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The Islands

The Islands

2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistDionne Irving is originally from Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of THE ISLANDS (Catapult) and QUINT (7.13 Books)  She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program and the Initiative on Race and Resilience at the...

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Fruiting Bodies

Fruiting Bodies

2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction FinalistKathryn Harlan received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she now teaches writing. She was the recipient of the 2019 August Derleth Graduate Creative Writing Prize. Her work has appeared in the...

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Hawk Mountain

Hawk Mountain

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionConner Habib hosts the podcast Against Everyone with Conner Habib, which features in-depth conversations on topics as broad as punk rock, philosophy, fiction, and occultism. His writing has appeared in multiple...

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Does My Body Offend You?

Does My Body Offend You?

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionBorn and raised in Puerto Rico, Mayra Cuevas is the author of the teen novels Does My Body Offend You? and Salty, Bitter, Sweet. Her short story Resilient was published as part of the anthology FORESHADOW. Mayra is...

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The Family Izquierdo

The Family Izquierdo

Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRubén Degollado is an educator from Texas and the author of The Family Izquierdo: A Novel and the young adult novel Throw. His fiction has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and...

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The Wrong End of the Telescope

The Wrong End of the Telescope

Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionRabih Alameddine is the author of the novels An Unnecessary Woman; I, the Divine; Koolaid; The Hakawati; and the story collection The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize. Purchase The Wrong End of the...

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Radiant Fugitives

Radiant Fugitives

Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionNawaaz Ahmed was born in Tamil Nadu, India. Before turning to writing, he was a computer scientist, researching search algorithms for Yahoo. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and is the winner of...

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The President and the Frog

The President and the Frog

Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCarolina de Robertis is the author of five novels, including Cantoras, winner of both a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, and a finalist for both the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; it was...

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Dear Miss Metropolitan

Dear Miss Metropolitan

Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionCarolyn Ferrell is the author of the short-story collection Don’t Erase Me, which received the Art Seidenbaum Award of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize program, the John C. Zacharis Award given by Ploughshares, and...

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How Beautiful We Were

How Beautiful We Were

Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionImbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been translated into eleven...

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