The PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers honors an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work — a novel or collection of short stories — represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.
2007
Review
"Like a lyrical mash-up, Levin interweaves the personal narrative style of her first book with taut prose evocative of Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams." Seed Magazine (read more)
2006
Review
"Both beautiful in its elegance and merciless in its intensity....For such dark material, Coake's stories are elegant and redolent of an aching form of humanity." Minneapolis Star Tribune (read more)
2004 (three winners)
Review
"A zestfully imagined novel of wonders both magical and mundane....He will win your admiration, and he will break your heart." Joyce Carol Oates, author of We Were the Mulvaneys (read more)
Publisher Comments
Meticulously crafted and irresistibly creepy, The King's Evil is a provocative and unsettling modern morality tale that probes man's intrinsic nature and the unilluminated recesses of his psyche. It is a mesmerizing debut from a brilliant young writer. (read more)
Review
"Truong weaves a sumptuous tale of gastronomy, language, cravings, and cruelty....The Book of Salt doesn't lay its secrets bare but coils itself around them." Joy Press, Village Voice (read more)
2002 (three winners)
Review
"Suri's elegant, clever prose and emotional and philosophical probing carry the action of the novel entirely....Suri has created an endlessly complex world that both breaks its inhabitants' hearts and occasionally holds out the prospect of redemption." Suzy Hansen, Salon (read more)
Review
"These characters are so unexpected, genuine, and deftly etched they will leave an imprint on even the most stubborn reader's heart." Diane Leslie, author of Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime (read more)
Review
"Repeatedly nails the fragile braggadocio of the modern American male....Each story takes on a memorable life of its own, thanks to Klam's...ability to find the perfect word or phrase." San Francisco Chronicle (read more)
