PEN America, based in New York City, has begun announcing the longlists of nominees for its 2017 Literary Awards. The awards are given out in a wide range of categories: debut fiction, general nonfiction, essays, biography, poetry, sports writing, lifetime achievement in literary sports writing, science, fiction and poetry in translation, drama (master dramatist, mid-career playwright, emerging playwright), emerging writers (awarded to 12 writers of short stories), the open book award (a full-length work by a writer of color), literary magazine editor, and a translation fund grant.

Nominees in four categories were announced on Dec. 5. The longlists in the other categories will be announced Dec. 7-9.

The finalists will be revealed on January 17, with winners to be announced on February 22.  The awards ceremony is scheduled for March 27 at the New School in New York City. (Four winners will not be announced until the awards ceremony: debut fiction, essay, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.)

The ten nominees for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction include seven women:

Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott

We Show What We Have Learned by Clare Beams

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang

When Watched: Stories by Leopoldine Core

Hide by Matthew Griffin

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss

Hurt People by Cote Smith

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennart-Moore

 

The ten nominees for the PEN Open Book Award include eight women:

Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett

Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah

The Big Book of Exit Strategies by Jamaal May

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours: Stories by Helen Oyeyemi

Look (poetry) by Solmaz Sharif

Problems by Jade Sharma

Cannibal (poetry) by Safiya Sinclair

Blackacre (poetry) by Monica Youn

 

Four of the ten nominees for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award are female:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel

The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish by Emily Voigt