Since 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards have honored outstanding voices in literature across fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, biography, children’s literature, and drama. With the help of their partners, the PEN America Literary Awards confer over 20 distinct awards and grants each year, and will be awarding some $380,000 to writers and translators in 2023.

PEN America also opens submissions to the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, offered every two years. Nominations are now open for the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, Senior Director of Literary Programs, said: “It was a special honor for all of us at PEN to celebrate the extraordinary writing among this year’s winners of our literary awards, as we returned to the Town Hall stage for the first time in two years. We can’t wait to do it all over again next spring to honor a new group of literary stars whose novels, biographies, memoirs, poems and translations will define the meaning of excellence for readers everywhere.”

Award and prize winners will be celebrated live during the Literary Awards Ceremony, which will take place in-person in the spring of 2023.

Detailed submission guidelines and instructions for the 2023 PEN America Literary Awards are available here. For more information on the Literary Awards, visit our website.

The 2022 PEN America literary awards were celebrated in New York City’s Town Hall on Feb. 28 the first in-person awards ceremony since March 2020. Emmy Award-winning late night host Seth Meyers hosted the event, with writers and translators receiving 11 juried awards, grants and prizes. PEN America conferred its annual career achievement awards to Elaine May and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, two visionaries whose influence has resonated across generations, and Jackie Sibblies Drury, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.