PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Winners -- BOOK LIST

PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction honors the "best published works of fiction by American permanent residents in a calendar year." 

National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle, with help from her friends, organized the award in 1980 as a peer-reviewed competitor of the National Book Award. They allied themselves with the Ineternational PEN organization (Poets, Editors, and Novelists) and named the award after William Faulkner who donated his Nobel Prize money to fund the award.

I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

Here is the list of all the winners, with notes if I've finished the book, it is on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook on Overdrive from my library. So far, I've only read 12 of the winners.

2021 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw ON OVERDRIVE

2020 Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis ON OVERDRIVE

2019 Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi ON OVERDRIVE

2018 Improvement by Joan Silber OON OVERDRIVE

2017 Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue ON OVERDRIVE

2016 Delicious Foods by James Hannaham ON OVERDRIVE

2015 Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish

2014 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler FINISHED

2013 Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

2012 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka ON OVERDRIVE

2011 The Collected Stories by Deborah Eisenberg

2010 War Dances by Sherman Alexie ON OVERDRIVE

2009 Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ON OVERDRIVE

2008 The Great Man by Kate Christensen TBR SHELF

2007 Everyman by Philip Roth FINISHED

2006 The March by E. L. Doctorow ON OVERDRIVE

2005 War Trash by Ha Jin TBR SHELF

2004 The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike TBR SHELF

2003 The Caprices by Sabina Murray TBR SHELF

2002 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (reviewed here) FINISHED

2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here) FINISHED

2000 Waiting by Ha Jin FINISHED

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham FINISHED

1998 The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor TBR SHELF

1997 Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories by Gina Berriault TBR SHELF

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford FINISHED

1995 Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson FINISHED

1994 Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth FINISHED

1993 Postcards by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

1992 Mao II by Don Delillo FINISHED

1991 Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman

1990 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow FINISHED

1989 Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter TBR SHELF

1988 World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle

1987 Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley TBR SHELF

1986 The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor

1985 The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff

1984 Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman

1983 Seaview by Toby Olson TBR SHELF

1982 The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

1981 How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish TBR SHELF



NOTES

Updated October 26, 2023. This is a redo of the list I first posted in 2010. The links needed a refresh!