PEN America has announced the winners of the majority of its 2017 Literary Awards, which include novelist, essayist, and critic Aleksandar Hemon for his oral history of Bosnian migrants, How Did You Get Here?: Tales of Displacement, and novelist Helen Oyeyemi for her debut story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.
"As global and national political discourse turn toward exclusion, PEN America continues to uphold the humanities' place in fostering coherent dialogue," PEN America president Andrew Solomon said in a statement. "Many of this year's honored books explore the social themes that are at the surface of our nation's consciousness. The PEN America Literary Awards grant us a critical opportunity to recognize the literary excellence of these works and to celebrate the varied experiences of their creators."
Winners of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay will be announced live at the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony. The ceremony, to be hosted by comedian Aasif Mandvi, will be held on March 27 at The New School's John L. Tishman Auditorium in Manhattan.
The 2017 awards will confer 23 distinct awards, fellowships, grants, and prizes, totaling to nearly $315,000. PEN America established its Literary Awards program in 1963.
