The nonprofit group PEN America announced the shortlists for their annual literary awards Tuesday, with Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Eve Babitz, and Jia Tolentino among the finalists.
Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion and Babitz’s I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz are finalists for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, along with Deborah Fleming’s Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape, Leslie Jamison’s Make It Scream, Make It Burn, and Emily Nussbaum’s I Like To Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution.
Fajardo-Anstine is nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection for Sabrina Corina, which was also a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction. Other nominees are Ayşe Papatya Bucak for The Trojan War Museum, Mimi Lok for Last of Her Name, Xuan Juliana Wang for Home Remedies, and Bryan Washington for Lot.
Nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel are Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch, 99 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai, Big Familia by Tomas Moniz, The Travelers by Regina Porter, and A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar.
The winners of the awards will be announced at a ceremony in New York on March 2, hosted by book-loving talk show host Seth Meyers.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas–based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
