PEN America revealed the winners of its 2025 awards, given annually by the literary nonprofit to outstanding works of literature.
Michael Deagler won the PEN/Hemingway Award, given to a debut novel, for Early Sobrieties, which was previously longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Deagler, a Kirkus Indie reviewer, did not attend the prize ceremony in New York because he was getting married in Los Angeles at the time. He said in a statement, “I can say without a doubt that this award is the second best thing to happen to me today.”
Jason Roberts took home the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, which last week won the Pulitzer Prize. Ana Raquel Minian was named the winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States.
The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection went to Amy Stuber for Sad Grownups, while Kali Nicole Gross won the PEN Open Book Award, given to “an exceptional book-length work of any literary genre by an author of color,” for Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times.
Dagoberto Gilb was honored with the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for A Passing West: Essays From the Borderlands, and Keith O’Brien won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography for Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball.
Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, the co-CEO of PEN America, said that the prizes “embody the mission that both ignites and unites us at PEN America: our mandate to uplift all writers, across backgrounds, genres, and forms. The writers who experiment boldly, and who speak truth to power. Our nominees this year are all exceptional and absolutely deserving of recognition and celebration for their outstanding work.”
A full list of this year’s winners is available at the PEN America website.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
