Today PEN America announced the Longlists for its Literary Awards, spanning 11 awards and naming more than 100 writers and translators, celebrating 2021’s most extraordinary new voices and living legends of literature. Finalists for the PEN America Literary Awards will be named in early 2022.
As publishing reckons with its history of inequity, the PEN Open Book Award goes to an exceptional book-length work of any literary genre by an author of color who has, prior to the submitted book’s publication, not received wide media attention. The awardee receives a fully-funded artist residency at Civitella Ranieri. This year’s judges for the prize are: Jaquira Díaz, Rigoberto González, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Khadijah Queen
The finalists are: Libertie: A Novel by Kaitlyn Greenidge (Algonquin Books), Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall (Simon & Schuster), The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease by Daisy Hernández (Tin House Books), Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir by Rajiv Mohabir (Restless Books), Names for Light: A Family History by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint (Graywolf Press), Transversal: Poems by Urayoán Noel (University of Arizona Press), Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods by Amelia Pang (Algonquin Books), No Gods, No Monsters: A Novel by Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone Publishing), Curb by Divya Victor (Nightboat Books), and White Magic by Elissa Washuta (Tin House Books).
Many of the nominees in other categories are already Civitellians.
Kirstin Valdez Quade’s (CRF 2017) The Five Wounds: A Novel is nominated for The PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.
Kaveh Akbar’s (CRF 2021) Pilgrim Bell: Poems, Threa Almontaser’s (CRF 2021) The Wild Fox of Yemen: Poems, and Mai Der Vang’s (CRF 2017) Yellow Rain: Poems are nominated for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection which goes to a poet whose distinguished collection of poetry represents a notable and accomplished literary presence.
Everything I Don’t Know by Jerzy Ficowski, translated from the Polish by Jennifer Grotz (CRF 2021) and Piotr Sommer is nominated for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
Congratulations to all of the nominees!