Finalist For The 2017 PEN Awards
PEN America has announced their finalists for a wide range of awards.
For the first time in its history (due to a new award category), a single book is a finalist for two PEN awards, Teju Cole’s Known and Strange Things (PRH/Random House; Recorded Books/Griot Audio; OverDrive Sample). It is a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a new prize in 2017, and also a finalist in the Essay category.
The PEN/Jean Stein Book Award recognizes a “book of extraordinary originality and lasting influence judged by an anonymous panel without submissions.”
The other finalists are:
- Olio, Tyehimba Jess (Wave Books)
- The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, Hisham Matar (PRH/Random House; OverDrive Sample)
- Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)
- The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)
Finalists for other PEN awards that have also been getting year-end best books attention include
- Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample),
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (PRH/Crown; BOT; OverDrive Sample)
- Lab Girl, Hope Jahren (PRH/Knopf; BOT; OverDrive Sample)
- Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (Norton/Liveright; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), also an Edgar nominee