The 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Nominees

Tertulia •

Feb 2nd, 2023

In early March, PEN America will convene literature lovers for its 60th annual literary awards recognizing the finest fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, and translation published in 2022. This year's star-studded ceremony will feature actor Kal Penn as emcee, Tina Fey as a career achievement honoree, and guest presenters including Molly Ringwald and trans pageant queen Geena Rocero.

Be sure to check in here as well as our social accounts for updates and dispatches from the event, taking place March 2 at New York City's Town Hall.

Here is the full list of finalists in all categories, including the prestigious Jean Stein Award, which goes to a work in any genre that has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.

My Pinup by Hilton Als

This memoir-cum-essay ode to Prince was called a slice of razor-sharp cultural criticism by Vogue editor Liam Hesse who wrote "My Pinup slips down like a cool, crisp martini."

Acting Class by Nick Drnaso

Graphic Novelist Nick Drnaso presents the follow-up to the Booker-nominated graphic novel Sabrina. Drnaso captures our present moment through the depiction of 10 strangers in an acting class.

As critic Carli Cutchin puts it, "Nick Drnaso possesses an uncanny ability to tap into the bleak, nihilistic undercurrents of American culture, and to depict these undercurrents just before they swirl to the surface."

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction, this debut novel follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami.

Critic and writer Isaac Fitzgerald called Escoffery's debut "nothing short of breathtaking," saying the book's "rich storytelling" and "triumphant worldbuilding" make it an "instant classic."

Dr. No by Percival Everett

Is it possible to be an expert on nothing? This dubious distinction is the calling card of the protagonist in Percival Everett's newest novel as James Bond parody.

Senior writer at Wired Kate Knibbs believes Everett is "an heir to Kurt Vonnegut infusing his work with a contagious sense of playfulness, one that makes the act of reading hundreds of pages about nothing into a treat rather than a chore. Dr. No is an unequivocal 'yes.'"

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

Sarah Manguso's debut novel tells the coming-of-age story of Ruthie in the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts. Writer Lauren Elkin praised the novel as "a testament to the marks left by the past from generation to generation."

Milkweed Smithereens by Bernadette Mayer

According to critic Howard Rosier, Bernadette Mayer's new volume of poems reads like "a glimpse into a vivacious mind rankled by incessant stillness and external distractions... Bracing and carnal, Mayer provides an idiosyncratic way to acknowledge changes in contemporary consciousness while framing her work in a new and dynamic light."

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

The 2022 Winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a dark romance told in alternating perspectives. Writer and editor Esme Hogeveen called it a "memorable, beautiful novel" that everyone should read.

The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar

This travel memoir traces the borders of identity while recording a journey through Uzbekistan. According to author and critic Megan Milks, "The White Mosque, is at once an intimately diaristic travelogue, a stirring personal inquiry, and a captivating, meticulously researched history."

Customs by Solmaz Sharif

The poems in the latest collection by National Book Award finalist Solmaz Sharif "acknowledge the impossibility of satisfying diasporic nostalgia," writes Kamran Javadizadeh in The New York Review of Books. "Those who look to a mother tongue or a nation of origin with a longing for 'home' are likely to find that empire has gotten there first."

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

Named one of the best books of 2022 by The New York Times, Night of the Living Rez explores the consequences and merits of inheritance through 12 stories.

In his review of the book, writer and editor Amil Niazi wrote: "Talty has assured himself a spot in the canon of great Native American literature...[He] forms a rich and vast picture of what it is to be alive, with stunning clarity, empathy and unwavering honesty."