8 PEN Award Winners and Finalists Worth Adding to Your Shelves

Longlisted for 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel

Jessamine Chan’s debut novel will wrench your heart and chill your bones. At least that’s what it did to me. The novel follows Frida Liu, a mother sentenced to a year of surveilled tutelage at a rehabilitation program after an insomnia-induced infraction. Of course, Frida didn’t mean to leave her daughter, Harriet, home alone for two hours. But there were the overflowing work emails to address and the cup of coffee beckoning her with the promise of energy she desperately needed as a sleep-deprived single mother. Still, the police officers who book her for child abandonment don’t see that. Neither does the judge, who sends Frida to a school set on reforming mothers by assigning them baby robot dolls that appraise the mothers’ love. In this haunting book, a vicious system lies before a hapless heroine. But can Frida somehow surmount it and reunite with her beloved daughter?

2019 Pen Open Book Award Winner

When I read this collection of literary sketches, I sighed. It was the sigh of feeling seen. The sigh of recognizing a Black sitcom reference. The sigh of finding my anime fandom reflected in Riley, who, when we first meet him, is en route to a comic book convention and cosplaying as Tamaki Suoh. Other memorable characters populate this hilarious and, at times, harrowing meditation on the Black middle class. There are the two PhD-parading mothers who chide each other through notes in their childrens’ backpacks. The social media addict who reminds us of the screen time notifications that we avoid. And who can forget the ASMR girl who conducts virtual consultations with a fetishist who doesn’t want to see her face? Sure, you’ll belly-laugh at Thompson-Spires’ collection. But most importantly, you’ll marvel at its prismatic portrayal of being human.

2013 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Finalist

Vaddey Ratner’s 2012 debut tells an excruciating tale. Its heroine, Raami, confronts the cruelties of war at the tender age of seven. The privileged life she has known in Cambodia collapses under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist movement responsible for an estimated two million deaths between 1975 and 1979. When Raami and her people are forced to leave their homes and sent on a terrifying journey, she clings to the only piece of solace she has left: stories. For years, treasured myths and poems have been the backbone of Raami’s family. And now, amid mass suffering, they are her lifeline. You’ll encounter great despair in this novel, but you’ll also find hope blooming. So as you are driven to tears with this book, as I was, allow it to also drive you closer to the sacred stories that swirl around you in myriad forms.

2011 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Winner

Echo Park is a world away from mine. And yet it feels so familiar that I can almost smell the jacaranda blooms. You’ll probably leave this book with the same feeling. Like HEADS OF THE COLORED PEOPLE, THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK interweaves the lives of several richly rendered characters. When a random shooting at a Spanish market results in tragedy, we are introduced to a few of these individuals, all hailing from the same rapidly gentrifying neighborhood that inspired the novel’s title. We have Aurora, a young girl grappling with place and personhood, and Hector, an itinerant worker who witnesses a murder and worries about the exposure of his illegal status. Other characters, like a hustler who promises to stay on the right path and a woman who confides in the Virgin Mary, add color to a Mexican American community clinging to various visions of the American Dream.

Longlisted for 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel

The exploits of Big Son, the hero of this book, bring to mind a trio of tall tale titans. Like me, you might’ve been regaled with their stories while sitting crisscross applesauce on a classroom carpet. Who are these titans, these mighty men? Why, Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry, of course. Beatty’s spin on the tall tale genre transports us to 1837, when Big Son’s Ohio City and nearby Cleveland are fighting for the title of the next great metropolis. With Big Son tasked to build a bridge across the Cuyahoga River and his younger brother, Meed, recruited to record Big Son’s and Ohio City’s renown in an almanac, an exhilarating tale emerges about the risks and rewards of seeking glory.

2021 PEN Open Book Award Winner 

Spanning 150 years and three countries, this short story collection highlights the secrets, traumas, and truths that we inherit. It begins with Masayuki and Taeko in 1868 and follows their descendants into the 2030s. Along our travels across space and time, we encounter Ayumi, who emigrates to America and wrestles with memory loss, and Luna, who returns to Japan to reckon with her father’s past. In one chapter, we find ourselves in the aftermath of World War II, grappling with the guilt of a doctor’s complicity. In another, a technologist warns us of a future where climate disaster wipes out humanity. To read this collection is to recognize that what happened in the past does not always stay there. Rather, it is passed on.

2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Finalist

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s magnificent tome confronts a history that continues to envelop us but that we still refuse to see. Chicasetta, Georgia, one of the settings in a book that spans both geographies and generations, forces me to look more closely at my native South Carolina. What stories lie in this rural soil? And who traipsed this earth before me? These questions are similar to the ones that bounce around in Ailey Pearl Garfield’s head. Though raised in the North, she returns every summer to Georgia, where her maternal lineage stretches across two centuries. To discover who she is and where she belongs, Ailey must face her family’s and her country’s expansive history. Only then will she—and we—be free.

2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Winner

Torrey Peters’s DETRANSITION, BABY reminds me of another brave and brilliant exploration of trans womanhood: the 2015 film Tangerine. In both works, trans women are allowed to be broken, wanton, hilarious, and human. These portrayals are a breath of fresh air. In Peters’s novel, Reese is in a relationship with her partner, Amy, and longs to have a baby. But her perfect life in New York City crumbles when Amy detransitions. To cope, Reese sleeps with married men, and Amy, now Ames, moves on to a new relationship but still wishes to reunite with his old flame. Soon, an opportunity arises when Katrina, Ames’s new lover, becomes pregnant with his child. Ames’s proposition? Maybe the three of them could raise the baby together and finally acquire the sense of contentment and completion that they’ve all been yearning for. Yes, Peters’s book is messy and unconventional, but therein lies its charm.