2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalists Announced

The finalists for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award have been announced. The award honors the best fiction by permanent American residents within a calendar year. For this 45th iteration of the award, three writers—Bruce Holsinger, Deesha Philyaw, and Luis Alberto Urrea—were chosen to serve as judges. They whittled down the potential award winners to a ten-book-long list, and now they’ve shortened the list further into five books. Finally, in a ceremony on May 15, 2025, they will announce a winner who they deem to be “the first among equals.”

Below are the five finalists.

Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda

Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

James by Percival Everett

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

Colored Television by Danzy Senna

The 45th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration will take place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., on May 15 this year. It will feature presentations by PEN/Faulkner judges, original readings by the winner and finalists, and a celebration of this year’s PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion, Dr. Carla Hayden.

The winner of the prize will receive $15,000, while each of the finalists gets $5,000.

To learn more about the finalists and the award, visit PEN/Faulkner.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.