Teju Cole tweemaal genomineerd voor PEN-prijzen, nominaties Matar, Whitehead, Franklin

De PEN America Literary Awards bekronen in een veelvoud van categorieën 'exceptional literary works'. Er is overlap met de nominaties voor de National Book Critics Circle Awards: Matar, Mayer, Desmond, Franklin, Jahren, Jess, Tisserand en Jackson maken ook daar kans. Eerder werd het boek van Hisham Matar ook al genomineerd voor de Costa Book Awards en de Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction en Colson Whitehead ontving al een National Book Award.

PEN/Jean Stein Book Award ($75,000)
To recognize a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact.

• Teju Cole, Known and Strange Things [excerpt | fragment uit de vertaling | recensie | toelichting door de vertaler]
• Tyehimba Jess, Olio
• Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between [fragment uit de Nederlandse vertaling]
• Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
• Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad [lees een fragment uit de Nederlandse vertaling]

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000)
To an author whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2016—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.

• Rion Amilcar Scott, Insurrections
• Clare Beams, We Show What We Have Learned
• Brit Bennett, The Mothers
• Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
• Cote Smith, Hurt People

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000)
For a book of essays published in 2016 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.

• Belle Boggs, The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood 
• Teju Cole, Known and Strange Things [excerpt | fragment uit de vertaling | recensie | toelichting door de vertaler]
• Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
• Angela Morales, The Girls in My Town
• Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000)
To an author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction published in 2015 or 2016 possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues.

• Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
• Patrick Phillips, The Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
• Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
• Laura Secor, Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran
• Anjan Sundaram, Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship

PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award ($10,000)
For a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of the physical or biological sciences published in 2016.

• Luke Dittrich, Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets
• Dan Flores, Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History
• Julian Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight
• Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
• Emily Voigt, The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish

PEN Open Book Award ($5,000)
For an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2016.

• Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory
• Jamaal May, The Big Book of Exit Strategies
• Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
• Solmaz Sharif, Look
• Monica Youn, Blackacre

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($5,000)
For a distinguished biography published in 2016.

• Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
• Joe Jackson, Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary
• Jane Kamensky, A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley
• Arthur Lubow, Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer
• Michael Tisserand, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)
For a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2016.

Onder andere Han Kang, The Vegetarian, vertaald uit het Koreaans door Deborah Smith.