Reading List · Debut fiction
The PEN/Hemingway Award was established in 1976 by Mary Hemingway, a PEN member, to honour her husband Ernest Hemingway and to recognise distinguished first books of fiction. It goes each year to a debut novel by a US citizen or permanent resident. The award is presented at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Since 2026 it has been administered by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, after PEN America (2017–2025) and PEN New England.
By Lisanne Swart · 51 winners since 1976 · Debut fiction · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 28 October 2026
Click a title to read about it further down ↓
Virginia Evans won the 50th-anniversary award for The Correspondent, presented on 26 April 2026 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Submissions for the next award, for debut novels published in 2026, ran from 1 July to 30 September 2026.
Quick answer
The PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel is an annual US prize for a first novel by an American author, founded in 1976 by Mary Hemingway. The winner receives US$10,000 and a residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. The 2026 winner is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
How this page chooses
The timeline at the top lists every winner for Debut Novel, all 51 of them. The latest fifteen have their own entry further down, oldest first; the titles in the timeline that you can click are those.
Under each book is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
The shop links on this page go straight to the shop. They are not affiliate links and I earn nothing if you buy.
Julius, a young Nigerian immigrant completing a psychiatry fellowship, walks the streets of New York City and travels to Brussels over the course of a year. The novel follows his observations and wanderings rather than a conventional plot.
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Private John Bartle serves in Iraq alongside fellow private Murph, having promised Murph’s mother that he will bring her son home alive. The novel follows the war and the aftermath of that promise back in the United States.
Won the 2012 Guardian First Book Award, was a National Book Award finalist and was filmed in 2017.
Darling grows up with her friends in a Zimbabwean shanty town, then moves as a teenager to the American Midwest to join an aunt, where she adjusts to life as an immigrant.
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize; its first chapter won the 2011 Caine Prize as a short story.
A collection of seven stories about loss: a soldier stepping on an explosive device, a Kansas town turning on the army recruiter who signed up its sons, a family coming apart around a child’s cancer, and a diplomat on a distant planet.
A debut collection published by Sarabande Books in 2014; Hemenway studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
In 1964, 24-year-old Eileen works as a secretary at a boys’ prison in Massachusetts and cares for her alcoholic father. In her last week in her home town, her fascination with a new colleague, Rebecca Saint John, draws her into a crime.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and filmed in 2023 with Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway.
Two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana are separated: Effia marries a British governor at Cape Coast Castle, while Esi is held in its dungeons and shipped to America. Each chapter follows a descendant of one of the two lines.
Won the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for a first book.
An unnamed narrator, close to finishing a chemistry PhD that her Chinese immigrant parents expect of her, is asked to marry by her boyfriend, Eric. She asks him to ‘ask me tomorrow’, and her life begins to unravel.
Wang was named a National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35’ honoree in 2017 and won a Whiting Award in 2018.
A large cast of Native Americans living in Oakland, California, each with their own struggles over addiction, work and identity, converge on a community powwow, where some of them plan a robbery.
A finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and winner of the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
In the isolated desert town of Pomoc, Nevada, 19-year-old waitress Cale Lambert cares for her dying grandfather. When her friend Penny Reyes disappears and no one seems concerned, Cale sets out across the desert to find her.
The chapters are deliberately out of order; the book opens with chapter 31.
In 1995, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls from a cruise ship near Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, and is returned to his mother by sharks. The event shapes the lives of Nainoa, his parents and his siblings in the years that follow.
Won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award and was named by Barack Obama as a favourite novel of 2020.
Reese, a trans woman, is drawn back to her former partner Ames, who has detransitioned, when Ames’s boss and lover Katrina becomes pregnant with his child. The three consider whether they could raise the baby together.
Longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, making Peters the first openly trans woman nominated.
Ever Geimausaddle, a young man of Native American and Mexican heritage, grows up in Oklahoma after his father is injured by police at the Mexican border. His story is told through the voices of his relatives.
A finalist for the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Demetrio, a young pastry chef who has lived undocumented in New York since childhood, is sent back to Madrid. On the flight he meets Jacobo, a wealthy Spanish student, and the two grow close in Jacobo’s family home.
Fuentes’s first book; he was born in Barcelona and was a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow.
Dennis Monk, 26 and a few months sober, is turned out of his parents’ suburban Philadelphia home. Over the following half-year he moves between the couches of relatives, old flames and friends in a gentrifying city.
Deagler’s debut novel, published in May 2024; he has said he quit drinking without ever joining AA.
Told through the letters and emails she writes between 2012 and 2022, the novel follows Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer in Annapolis, who writes to family, colleagues and authors as her eyesight fails.
Also won the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction; Evans had written seven unpublished novels before it.
Under the current PEN/Faulkner rules, the award is for a debut novel published by a commercial, university or independent US press during the calendar year. Authors must be living US citizens or permanent residents, and must not have published a novel before; a self-published novel or a traditionally published story collection does not disqualify them. Translations count only if the author translated the book.
Only publishers and literary agents may submit, through an online platform, with a fee of US$85 per book. A book may be entered for both the PEN/Hemingway Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A panel of three fiction writers chooses the winner; for 2026 the judges were Rachel Beanland, Dionne Irving and Taymour Soomro.
For much of its history the award covered first books of fiction of any length, so the winners include story collections such as Bobbie Ann Mason’s Shiloh and Other Stories (1983) and Arna Bontemps Hemenway’s Elegy on Kinderklavier (2015). The prize was administered by PEN New England, then by PEN America from 2017 to 2025, before the PEN/Faulkner Foundation took over; 2026 marked its fiftieth anniversary.
Several winners returned to the prize lists later in their careers. Yiyun Li, the 2006 winner, won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2023 and the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction in 2026; Ben Fountain, the 2007 winner, took the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Year labels refer to the award year, usually the spring after publication.
An annual US award, founded in 1976 by Mary Hemingway, for a debut novel by an American citizen or permanent resident.
Virginia Evans, for The Correspondent, presented on 26 April 2026 in Boston.
The winner receives US$10,000 and a residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.
Since 2026 the PEN/Faulkner Foundation; PEN America administered it from 2017 to 2025, and PEN New England before that.
At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
The current rules are for debut novels, but earlier winners include story collections such as Shiloh and Other Stories and Elegy on Kinderklavier.
Loyd Little, for Parthian Shot, in 1976.
No. Only publishers and literary agents may submit, with a US$85 fee per title.
Winner list last verified 28 October 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendationsThe Night Owl Book Finder
