Ann Patchett Wins PEN/Faulkner Award

Posted on April 1, 2002

Ann Patchett has won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award award for her novel Bel Canto (HarperCollins). She will take home the coveted $15,000 literary prize. Other finalists for the award included Jonathan Franzen for The Corrections; Karen Joy Fowler for Sister Noon; Claire Messud for The Hunters; and Manil Suri for The Death of Vishnu.

Named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize funds to create an award for young writers, and affiliated with PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists), the international writers' organization, the PEN/Faulkner Award was founded by writers in 1980 to honor their peers, and is now the largest juried award for fiction in the United States.

The award judges, who are themselves writers of fiction, each read more than 250 novels and short story collections published during the calendar year before selecting five outstanding books. The book designated the winner earns $15,000 for its author; each of the others receives $5,000. All five authors read from their works and are honored at an award ceremony and celebration held at the Folger Library in May.