In selecting Ottessa Moshfegh as winner of the 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award, this year’s judges—authorsAlexandra Marshall, Jay Parini, and former PEN/Hemingway winner Joshua Ferris—praised Moshfegh for her “prowess and her promise.”
Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Vice, and The Paris Review. She was awarded the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review, as well as The Believer Book Award, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her novella, McGlue, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose.
In addition to $25,000, the winner also receives a one-week residency and $5,000 honorarium from the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series at the University of Idaho’s MFA Creative Writing Program. All competition honorees receive Residency Fellowships at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, a retreat for artists and writers.
The award is funded by the Hemingway Family, the Hemingway Society, and PEN New England. Major support is also provided by Mary & Kurt Cerulli. For more information, visit the PEN/Hemingway website.
The Hemingway Review Blog is pleased to announce a series of interviews with PEN/Hemingway Award winners. Our first interview is with Ottessa Moshfegh.