Awards: PEN America Literary Finalists; International Arabic Fiction Longlist

PEN America has announced the finalists for the 2022 PEN America Literary Awards, which include the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and the PEN Translation Prize. The finalists can be seen here.

The winners will be announced at an in-person event on February 28 in New York City.

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A longlist of 16 novels has been released for the $50,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which recognizes "excellence in contemporary Arabic creative writing and to encourage the readership of high quality Arabic literature internationally through the translation and publication of winning and shortlisted novels in other major languages." Six shortlisted titles will be announced in March, and the winner named in May. Check out the complete longlist here.

The award is sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, at the Department of Culture and Tourism--Abu Dhabi, and was originally mentored by the Booker Prize Foundation in London. Collectively the longlisted authors span the age range of 30-65 and hail from nine countries. 

Professor Yasir Suleiman, chair of the board of trustees, said: "The novels on the longlist for this, the 15th prize cycle, continue to explore a range of themes that deal with fracture and the unresolved questions that have bedevilled the relationship of Arab society and culture with its various strands and with the external Other. Voices from the margins of society are made to speak and question in different registers of exclusion and resistance that articulate the feeling of alienation, bewilderment and, at the margins, some nascent hope. Despite their considerable local achievements on the Arab literary scene, authors on this list are poised to be celebrated by a broad pan-Arab readership at home and in the diaspora."  

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