Edwidge Danticat has won the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award, the literary prize given annually to a writer who has “demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form.”
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced Thursday that Danticat was the winner of the prize, named after the short story writer and novelist Bernard Malamud.
Danticat made her literary debut in 1994 with the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, and followed that up two years later with the story collection Krik? Krak!. Her most recent book, the story collection Everything Inside, was published in 2019; it won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Story Prize.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez, the PEN/Malamud Award committee chair, said in a statement, “Edwidge Danticat is a once-in-a-generation kind of writer, one who changes the landscape of fiction by crafting stories that exalt human experience into the realm of the mythic. It’s impossible to read Danticat’s exquisitely crafted stories and not walk away transformed.”
Danticat said she was “deeply honored” to win the award. “Many of my short stories pay homage to the oral tradition I was steeped in as a child in Haiti and as an immigrant in the United States,” she said. “The short story has also been a unique space for me to experiment, explore, and grow as a storyteller, which makes this award even more gratifying.”
The PEN/Malamud Award was first given in 1988. Previous winners have included Grace Paley, Alice Munro, John Edgar Wideman, and Yiyun Li.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
