Faulkner Award for Fiction

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the author of the best American work of fiction that year. The winner receives US $15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US $5000. The foundation brings the winner and runners-up to Washington, D.C. to read from their works at the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation is an outgrowth of William Faulkner's generosity in donating his 1949 Nobel Prize winnings, "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers." It is affiliated with the writers' organization International PEN.

The award was first given in 1981.


Fiction award winners
1981 Walter Abish, How German Is It
1982 David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident
1983 Toby Olson, Seaview
1984 John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday
1985 Tobias Wolff, The Barracks Thief
1986 Peter Taylor, The Old Forest
1987 Richard Wiley, Soldiers in Hiding
1988 T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
1989 James Salter, Dusk
1990 E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate
1991 John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
1992 Don DeLillo, Mao II
1993 E. Annie Proulx, Postcards
1994 Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
1995 David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars
1996 Richard Ford, Independence Day
1997 Gina Berriault, Women in Their Beds
1998 Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home
1999 Michael Cunningham, The Hours
2000 Ha Jin, Waiting
2001 Philip Roth, The Human Stain
2002 Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
2003 Sabina Murray, The Caprices
2004 John Updike, The Early Stories
2005 Ha Jin, War Trash
2006 E.L. Doctorow, The March
2007 Philip Roth, Everyman