The five finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction have been announced by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation in Washington, D.C. The PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction is the United States’ largest peer-juried prize in the field. Established in 1980, the award honors the best works of fiction published by an American citizen in a calendar year. The award will be presented at the Folger Theatre in Washington on May 14.
Two of five finalists are women with current affiliations at American universities.
Julie Iromuanya is an assistant professor of English and Africana literature at Arizona State University. She also teaches in the university’s master of fine arts degree program in creative writing. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Dr. Iromuanya is a graduate of the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Dr. Iromuanya is being honored for her book Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, 2015), a story of a Nigerian immigrant to the United States who fools his parents in Africa that he has become a doctor.
Elizabeth Tallent is a professor of literature and creative writing at Stanford University. Professor Tallent has taught at Stanford since 1994. She is being honored for her short story collection Mendocino Fire (Harper, 2015). The Pen/Faulkner judges said that Professor Tallent’s stories depict “turbulent change and ecological peril.” She is also the author of the novel Museum Pieces (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985) and three other short story collections. Professor Tallent is a graduate of Yale University.