Rickey Fayne’s novel The Devil Three Times is on the longlist for the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, announced on Tuesday, January 20, 2026.
The PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel is awarded annually to a full-length novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction. The award, worth US$25,000, is named after Ernest Hemingway and funded by the Hemingway family and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/Society. Some of the previous winners since it was handed out in 1976 have been Yaa Gyasi, Teju Cole, and NoViolet Bulawayo.
The journey to the winner for 2026 started with an announcement of the longlist by the organisation on Tuesday, January 20.
“This year’s extraordinary list captures all the excitement of discovering new talents,” said PEN/Faulkner Awards Committee Chair Lauren Francis-Sharma. “From frenzied voyages and forlorn figures to chasmic yearnings, age-old regrets, and youthful transgressions, each story is a reflection of the absolute thrill of American fiction.”
Fayne, a native of West Tennessee, holds an MA in English from Northwestern University and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Texas’s Michener Center for Writers. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, American Short Fiction, Guernica, The Sewanee Review, andThe Kenyon Review.
His longlisted novel, The Devil Three Times, was published by Little, Brown and Company in May 2025. Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, it has been hailed as a “baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.”
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