Finalists have been selected for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The winner, who will be named in early April, receives $15,000, while the remaining four finalists each get $5,000. All five authors--along with this year's PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion--will be honored on May 2 at the PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration in Washington, D.C. This year's finalists are:
Witness by Jamel Brinkley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Open Throat by Henry Hoke (MCD)
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jiménez (Grand Central)
Absolution by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Users by Colin Winnette (Soft Skull)
"With an astonishingly varied range of protagonists--the ghosts of New York City, U.S. military wives in wartime Saigon, Staten Island Latinas, a virtual reality designer, and a mountain lion living under the Hollywood sign--this year’s finalists offer definitive proof that fiction, to invoke Walt Whitman, contains multitudes," said committee chair Louis Bayard. "We can’t wait to celebrate these gifted authors and their unique contributions to our art form."
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The shortlist has been selected for the second annual Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada, which honors "the commitment of independent presses to fiction of exceptional literary merit." The winner of the prize, which has separate judges and prizes from the U.K. prize of the same name, will be announced March 19.
A total of $35,000 will be distributed to the presses, authors, and translators. Each press included in the longlist receives $2,000. The five shortlisted books will be awarded an additional $3,000 each, split equally between the publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator, where applicable.
The five shortlisted books and their independent presses are:
The Long Form by Kate Briggs (Dorothy, a publishing project)
Two Sherpas by Sebastián Martínez Daniell, translated by Jennifer Croft (Charco Press)
The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated by Daniel Levin Becker (Transit Books)
Lojman by Ebru Ojen, translated by Aron Aji and Selin Gökçesu (City Lights Publishers)
The Box by Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Graywolf Press)
Founder of the prize and jury chair Lori Feathers said: "It was difficult to narrow our superb longlist to a five-title shortlist. But after careful deliberations, our jury determined that these books best exemplify the creativity and risk taking that makes the work of small publishers so indispensable in today's literary landscape."
A Zoom party celebrating the longlist with publishers, authors, and translators took place on February 27. To view it, click here.
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The longlist has been selected for the £30,000 (about $38,120) 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction, championing "ambitious, inspiring and thought-provoking novels written by women in English." The shortlist will be announced April 24, the winner on June 13. To see the 16 longlisted titles, click here.
Chair of judges Monica Ali commented: "With the strength and vitality of contemporary women's fiction very much in evidence, reading the entries for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction has been a joyful experience. Each one of these books is brilliant, original and utterly unputdownable. Collectively, they offer a wide array of compelling narratives from around the world, written with verve, wit, passion and compassion."