World Literary Awards

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PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction ぺん/ふぉーくなーしょう(ふぃくしょんぶもん)

Edition 41 (2021)

FictionNovelAmerican Literature Award

Winners

5 people

A debut short-story collection about Black women, desire, faith, and community, tracing family and generational conflict with candor and tenderness.

A debut short-story collection about Black women, desire, fa…

179 pages
race and identitydesirereligion and communityfamily

A novel about a Korean American man whose sense of self begins to slip, using disappearance and doubles to ask what it means to exist and be seen.

A novel about a Korean American man whose sense of self begi…

316 pages
identityfamilyKorean Americansurrealism
Rufi Thorpe Nominee

A novel about friendship, violence, and class at a Southern California high school, where two outsiders test the limits of loyalty and harm.

A novel about friendship, violence, and class at a Southern …

288 pages
friendshipviolenceclassadolescence
Robin Wasserman Nominee

A novel in which the lives of three women intersect through memory research, power, desire, and the long aftermath of abuse.

A novel in which the lives of three women intersect through …

336 pages
womenmemorypowerfamily

A short-story collection set in the Ozarks, following a wide cast of characters and finding quiet moral pressure in ordinary life.

A short-story collection set in the Ozarks, following a wide…

176 pages
short storiesOzarkseveryday liferelationships