The literary nonprofit group PEN America unveiled the longlists for its annual literary awards.
Yiyun Li was nominated for the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, given to “a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact,” for her memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow; the author won the prize in 2020 for her novel Where Reasons End. U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze made the longlist for his collection Into the Hush, as did Karen Russell for her novel The Antidote.
Also nominated for the award were Catharina Coenen for Unexploded Ordnance, Brandon Hobson for The Devil Is a Southpaw, Jesse Lonergan for Drome, Cannupa Hanska Luger for SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide, Lauren Markham for Immemorial, Roberto Tejada for Carbonate of Copper, and Joy Williams for The Pelican Child.
Nominated for the PEN Open Book Award, given to “an exceptional book-length work of any literary genre by an author of color,” were Aaron John Curtis for Old School Indian, Rickey Fayne for The Devil Three Times, Justin Haynes for Ibis, Brandon Kilbourne for Natural History, Susanna Kwan for Awake in the Floating City, Esther Lin for Cold Thief Palace, Carrie R. Moore for Make Your Way Home, Mary Annette Pember for Medicine River, Vidyan Ravinthiran for Asian/Other, and Samyak Shertok for No Rhododendron.
The finalists for this year’s awards will be announced sometime before the winners are revealed at a ceremony next March. The longlists for all 10 of the prizes are available at PEN America’s website.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
