Shortlists have been announced for the 2014 PEN Literary Awards, which include the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize ($25,000), PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000), PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award ($10,000), PEN Open Book Award ($5,000), PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($5,000), PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000), PEN/Steven Kroll Award for Picture Book Writing ($5,000), PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000) and PEN Translation Prize ($3,000). Winners will named July 30. You can view a complete list of judges and shortlisted titles here.
During the announcement event Tuesday night, PEN also named Ron Childress winner of the biannual $25,000 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for his unpublished novel And West Is West. "Tying together America's financial system and military operations through characters in a novel is such a bold move," said Barbara Kingsolver, who founded the prize in 2000. "This writer can write, these characters are real, the story is crackerjack." Childress also receives a publishing contract from Algonquin Books, which will publish And West Is West in the fall of 2015.
