American author Percival Everett's novel James among nominees for the PEN/Faulkner fiction prize
American author Percival Everett's novel James is up for another literary award — the PEN/Faulkner Prize for fiction.
Other nominees include The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner and Small Rain by Garth Greenwell.
The awards longlist of 10 was announced on Feb. 3 by the U.S.-based PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which will narrow the finalists to five in March and reveal the winner — who receives U.S. $15,000 U.S. (approx. $21,828.02 Cdn) — in April.
Everett's novel, a dramatic reworking of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, already has won the National Book Award. It was also a Booker finalist and won the Kirkus Prize for fiction.
This past summer the novel was on former U.S. president Barack Obama's summer reading list for 2024.
Pemi Aguda's Ghostroots, Susan Muaddi Darraj's Behind You Is the Sea and Ruben Reyes Jr.'s There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven also are PEN/Faulkner nominees, along with Danzy Senna's novel Colored Television, Ben Shattuck's The History of Sound and John Vercher's Devil Is Fine.
Previous winners of the award, established in 1981, include Philip Roth, John Edgar Wideman and Yiyun Li.
