PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalists Include Anne Boyer and Ilya Kaminsky

The PEN America/Jean Stein Book Award finalists have been announced, and include poets Anne Boyer, for The Undying, and Ilya Kaminsky, for Deaf Republic. The award carries a $75,000 prize and is granted to "a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact." Seth Meyers will host the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on March 2. More:

PEN America President Jennifer Egan said, “The 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony is the embodiment of our core mission: to foster and celebrate literary culture by bringing a multiplicity of excellent writers to the widest possible audience. This year, as we expand to The Town Hall’s iconic stage and welcome as host Seth Meyers, a beloved champion of literature, we’re propelled by our deep conviction that writing—across borders, languages, cultures, genres, and subjects—has the power to sharpen minds, awaken empathy, and to shape and elevate public discourse.”

 

The PEN America Literary Awards have, since their founding in 1963, brought together award-winning writers, editors, translators, and critics in dynamic and diverse panels of judges that determine the given year’s most resonant literature. In their selection of Finalists, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award judging panel—Marilyn Chin, Garth Greenwell, Rebecca Makkai, Michael Schaub, and William T. Vollmann—have elevated works that have reshaped the boundaries of form and signaled strong potential for lasting literary influence. The 2020 Finalists include Anne Boyer for The Undying (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Yiyun Li for Where Reasons End (Random House), Ilya Kaminsky for Deaf Republic: Poems (Graywolf Press), Rion Amilcar Scott for The World Doesn’t Require You (Liveright), and Chris Ware for Rusty Brown (Pantheon). 

Congrats to all, and good luck on March 2!