World Literary Awards

← Back to PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

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 43 (2023)

FictionNovelAmerican Literature Award

Winners

5 people
Yiyun Li Winner

A postwar French novel about a literary hoax devised by two 13-year-old girls, probing invention, truth, and the urge to tell stories.

Is truth outside story, or does story create truth?

222 pages
authorshipfiction vs. truthcoming of agehoax

A linked story collection about a Jamaican family in America, exploring immigrant experience, identity, poverty, and family tension.

The survival strategies of an immigrant family emerge between pain and humor.

198 pages
immigrant experienceidentityfamilypoverty
Laura Warrell Nominee

A debut novel about unrequited love, jazz, and the women orbiting a trumpet player as they claim their own voices.

Around love and music, the women discover how to speak for themselves.

369 pages
lovemusicwomen's voicesdesire
Dionne Irving Nominee

A novel spanning London, Panama, France, Jamaica, and Florida to trace the legacy of colonialism in the lives of Jamaican women.

Across many places, the reverberations of colonialism keep sounding.

273 pages
colonialismraceimmigrationclass
Kathryn Harlan Nominee

An eerie debut collection that builds eight strange worlds where desire, transformation, and decay coexist.

In the midst of decay, desire and magic quietly sprout.

178 pages
transformationuncannydesirequeer life