PEN/Faulkner Award

PEN/Faulkner Award, American literary prize for fiction founded in 1980 by author Mary Lee Settle and organized by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Settle, then teaching at the University of Virginia, established the award in response to what she considered the commercialization of American literature prizes. Named for the writers organization International PEN, an American branch of which was then hosted at the university, and for Southern writer William Faulkner, who was once a writer in residence...