PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the author of the best American work of fiction that year. The winner receives US $15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US $5000. The foundation brings the winner and runners-up to Washington, D.C. to read from their works at the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation is an outgrowth of William Faulkner's generosity in donating his 1949 Nobel Prize winnings, "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers." Mary Lee Settle was also one of the founders after controversy at the 1979 National Book Award. It is affiliated with the writers' organization International PEN.

The award was first given in 1980.


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Description from PEN/Faulkner Page
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is a national prize which honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year. Three judges, chosen annually by the directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, select five books from among the more than 300 works submitted, making this the largest peer-juried award in the country. The winning writer and four finalists are honored at a ceremony held in Washington at the Folger Shakespeare Library in May.

Submission Guidelines

• Publishers (trade, university, or small presses), agents, or authors may submit books published in 2009 by living American writers.

• Authors must be American citizens.
• Four copies of each title should be mailed to the following address
  by OCTOBER 31, 2009:
  PEN/Faulkner Foundation
  ATTN: Jessica Neely
  201 East Capitol St., SE
  Washington, DC 20003

• There are no submission fees or application forms.

• PEN/Faulkner Foundation does not accept self-published books. The final selections are made by the judges in early spring.