Claire Jiménez won the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central). She will receive $15,000, with the other shortlisted writers each getting $5,000. All five will be honored May 2 at the annual PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration in Washington, D.C., featuring an appearance by 2023 PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion David Baldacci.
"Our judges have accomplished the seemingly impossible task of finding a 'first among equals' among five diverse and powerfully impressive titles," said Louis Bayard, PEN/Faulkner Awards committee chair. "We look forward to celebrating Jiménez's extraordinary novel at our awards ceremony in May alongside the accomplished work of her fellow finalists."
The judges noted that Jiménez "has crafted a visceral work of art full of nuance, humor, and humanity, through incisive and loving character work, the finely calibrated unspooling of narrative, and the exquisite deployment of language, ranging from poetic prose to Spanglish to the sociolect of working-class Staten Island. A marvelously rendered novel about women, dangers to women, and our strength, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez is a complex portrait of resilience, full of life: anger, laughter, sorrow, and love."
"I began writing this story a decade ago, a strange tale about the disappearance of a Puerto Rican girl from Staten Island and the women in her family who cannot stop looking for her," said Jiménez. "This novel is not only about a missing girl but also missing stories. I am so grateful to the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and the judges for honoring the voices of the Ramirez women, and I cannot wait to celebrate the extraordinary books of my fellow finalists at the award ceremony in May."
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Winners have been named for the 2024 Windham-Campbell Prizes, which award eight writers with $175,000 each "to support their work and allow them to focus on their creative practice independent of financial concerns."
Michael Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, said: "Each year, I feel incredibly honored to call the eight recipients: to be the messenger delivering the entirely unexpected and life-changing news that they have been awarded $175,000. It is clear--now, more than ever--how challenging working in the creative industries, around the world, can be. A Windham Campbell Prize is intended to offer financial security, and through this freedom, the time and space to write, to think, to create--all without pressure or expectation."
The eight winners are:
Fiction
Deirdre Madden (Ireland)
Kathryn Scanlan (U.S.)
Nonfiction
Christina Sharpe (Canada/U.S.)
Hanif Abdurraqib (U.S.)
Drama
Christopher Chen (U.S.)
Sonya Kelly (Ireland)
Poetry
m. nourbeSe philip (Canada/Trinidad and Tobago)
Jen Hadfield (U.K./Canada)