PEN/Faulkner Award for 2025 longlist announced

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction 2025 longlist announced

‘Pemi Aguda, Percival Everett, and John Vercher are on the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction 2025 longlist announced on Monday, February 3, 2025.

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, first handed out in 1981, is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year’s best works of fiction by living US American citizens. Some previous winners have been Imbolo Mbue in 2017 and Deesha Philyaw in 2021.

The 2025 jury is comprised of novelist, literary scholar, and editor of New Literary History Bruce Holsinger, author Deesha Philyaw, and author Luis Alberto Urrea. They considered 414 eligible novels and short story collections by American authors published in the US during the 2024 calendar year. Submissions came from 166 publishing houses, including small and academic presses, and announced a longlist on Monday.

“This year’s list teems with the personal and the historic, offering us humor, tenderness, and hardship, all while confronting readers with a clarity that is reflective of the exciting breadth of American fiction,” said PEN/Faulkner Awards Committee Chair Lauren Francis-Sharma.

The longlist announced has the following writers of African descent on it;

  • Ghostroots, ‘Pemi Aguda
  • James, Percival Everett
  • Devil Is Fine, John Vercher

The jury will select five finalists from the longlist for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction which will be announced in March. The winning book—the “first among equals,” selected from the five finalists—will be announced in April. The authors of the five finalist books will be honored at the PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library on May 15.

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