The long list has been announced for two PEN American Centre Prizes. The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000): To an author whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2015—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise of a second work of literary fiction; and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000):For a book of essays published in 2015 that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.
Debut fiction LONGLIST:
In the Country: Stories (Alfred A. Knopf), Mia Alvar
The Boatmaker (Tin House Books), John Benditt
Did You Ever Have A Family (Gallery/Scout Press/Simon & Schuster), Bill Clegg
Hausfrau: A Novel (Random House), Jill Alexander Essbaum
The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Angela Flournoy
Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press), Julie Iromuanya
The Sympathizer: A Novel (Grove Press), Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Given World: A Novel (Simon & Schuster), Marian Palaia
It Had Been Planned and There Were Guides (Fiction Collective Two/University of Alabama Press), Jessica Lee Richardson
Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (Europa Editions), Jennifer Tseng