Celebrating 50 Years of the PEN/Hemingway Award & a New Partnership with the PEN/Faulkner Foundation
In 2026 the Hemingway Foundation and Society will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the PEN Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.
Since Mary Hemingway, a member of PEN, first established the award in 1976 to honor the memory of her husband, Ernest Hemingway, and to recognize distinguished first books of fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award has helped to recognize and support such talented (then) emerging authors as Joan Silber, Marilynne Robinson, Bobbie Anne Mason, Edward P. Jones, Susan Power, Chang-rae Lee, Ha Jin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jennifer Heigh, Teju Cole, Tommy Orange, and this year’s winner Michael Deagler. In doing so, it has truly made a lasting contribution to American literature.
Now to inaugurate a new era for the award, The Hemingway Society is delighted to announce a new partnership with the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which has assumed administrative duties for the PEN/Hemingway Award, which for the past six years has been administered by the PEN America. In addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation also administers the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Together, we look forward to building on our long, mutual traditions of honoring and supporting remarkable American authors.
The PEN/Hemingway Award is supported by the Hemingway Foundation and Society, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, the Hemingway Family, the Ucross Foundation, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and the Friends of the Ernest Hemingway Collection.
All competition honorees receive Ucross Residency Fellowships at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, a retreat for artists and writers. A panel of three distinguished fiction writers selects the winner.
For more information about the award, visit the PEN/Hemingway area of the PEN/Faulkner website.
2025 PEN/Hemingway Winner
Early Sobrieties, Michael Deagler (Astra House)
Semi-Finalists
Judges: Lauren Acampora, Allegra Goodman, Akhil Sharma
Dead in Long Beach, California, Venita Blackburn (MCD)
Controlled Conversations, Karol Lagodzki (Milford House Press)
The Road to the Salt Sea, Samuel Kọ́láwọlé (Amistad)
Please consider supporting this award with a donation.