NEWS

Our Longlisted Books for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards

PEN America has announced the longlists for its 2021 Literary Awards in the categories of debut fiction, diversity, nonfiction, essay, biography, sports writing, science writing, and translation, plus the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Our longlisted titles published by Penguin Random House imprints and Penguin Random House Publisher Services publisher clients are presented below.

PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

• THE BUTTERFLY LAMPSHADE by Aimee Bender (Doubleday)
• THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI: A Novel by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead Books)
• CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)
• THIS IS ALL I GOT: A New Mother’s Search for Home by Lauren Sandler (Random House)

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction

• CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)
• HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker (Doubleday)
• THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells (Tim Duggan Books)

PEN Open Book Award

• INHERITORS by Asako Serizawa (Doubleday)

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

• INHERITORS by Asako Serizawa (Doubleday)

PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel

• HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD: A Novel by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books)

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Prize for Biography

• MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman by Ben Hubbard (Tim Duggan Books)
• THE POWER OF ADRIENNE RICH: A Biography by Hilary Holladay (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

• WOW, NO THANK YOU.: Essays by Samantha Irby (Vintage)

PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

• THE BIRD WAY: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin Press)
• NOSE DIVE: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells by Harold McGee (Penguin Press)

PEN Translation Prize

• TOKYO UENO STATION: A Novel by Yu Miri (Riverhead Books)
  Translated from the Japanese by Morgan Giles
• A COUNTRY FOR DYING: A Novel by Abdellah Taïa (Seven Stories Press, a PRHPS publisher client)
  Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
• TREASURE OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR by Serge Pey (Archipelago Books, a PRHPS publisher client)
  Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation

• LEAN AGAINST THIS LATE HOUR by Garous Abdolmalekian (Penguin Books)
  Translated from the Persian by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

To read the complete 2021 PEN America Longlists, click here.

Finalists for all 2021 PEN America book awards will be announced in February.