Announcement of the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award Nominations

Continuing the Dugan Family Saga, A Winter Night focuses on eldest daughter, Angie, and her issues with self-acceptance, love, and learning to trust. Angie’s been unlucky with men. Three awkward relationships have left her leery of commitment. When she meets Matt, a friend of her brother’s, she is instantly attracted to him. The attraction seems mutual, yet Angie can’t quiet her inner doubts. Is his interest sincere? Is he just using her for sex? Does he really not care that she carries a bit of extra weight? Angie is good at reading people, a skill that serves her well in her job as a social worker for a retirement community, but can’t read Matt at all. When Angie hears that a waitress at the bar where Matt works is arrested for selling cocaine, she soon learns that she and Matt were more than co-workers. Matt says the relationship is over, but Angie has trouble believing that, especially because he talks to her whenever she calls, and she calls all the time. Then there’s Matt’s history of drug use, which may not be as behind him as he says. His answers to Angie’s frustrated questions are plausible, reasonable, and ring of truth, but Angie’s suspicions remain. Is she being played for a fool? Or is she just scared of getting hurt again? A Winter Night is Parrish’s ninth book of fiction. Earlier Dugan books are Maggie’s Ruse, The Amendment, and Our Love Could Light The World.

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On the windswept plains of Far West Texas, the town of Rosadero sits at the crossroads of many worlds. Renowned as a capital of postmodern art, the ruins of the Zaldos Pueblo haunt the edge of town with the mystery of a vanished people. In the evenings, unexplained balls of light streak across the prairie, inspiring the imaginations of residents and visitors alike. Home to rancher dynasties and descendants of the Mexican Revolution, the modern realities of the border sweep up all who find themselves in Rosadero. Outlaw drifters with romantic dreams, border agents at war with their consciences, refugees seeking sanctuary, and the family risking everything to provide it—this is where their stories meet.

Into this unlikeliest of settings, Anna Tatevyan travels in search of her missing brother, Jakob. A graduate student obsessed with the relationship between a sitting U.S. Congressman and an international crime syndicate, Jakob has vanished into the high desert without a trace. On her journey for the truth, Anna tries to help another woman also searching for a missing brother: Mariazul Bautista, a woman whose encounter with Anna leads to her arrest by the Border Patrol, an arrest that turns out to be a kidnapping.
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An anti-Western about the American origins of global violence, Light in Rosadero is a reckoning with the dark legacy of the frontier.

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Through this timely collection of seven short stories for older teens and adults, Irshad Abdal-Haqq unveils the legacy of oppression that countless generations of  black Americans have endured. The first story, involving a girl and her tribe who are running for their lives from an evil army that forces female captives into sexual slavery, is reminiscent of a modern-day humanitarian refugee crisis in the Middle East, Africa, or South Asia. In a coming-of-age narrative, a teenaged boy defies law enforcement by fleeing from his rural home in the dark of night after his parents are lynched for seeking fair labor treatment. A third story is the tale of a multiethnic gang of teens who would rather live as a family of outlaws rather than endure the humiliation of racism and poverty. And in yet another, a long-time resident of a gentrifying neighborhood enlists the aid of a newcomer in her quest to fight off eviction for another month.

Action-packed and eloquently expressed, these mesmerizing stories of  desperation, hope, resilience, and human frailty, will spark the imagination and touch the heart of readers of all backgrounds. And most importantly, they highlight the need for intercultural cooperation against systemic injustices that discount the value of black lives. Distinctive notes at the end of the book provide ample support for educational activities, reading group discussions, and academic study. 

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Sometimes we try to connect to others, especially people we love but end up missing each other for a variety of reasons.

The stories in STUMBLING TOWARD GRACE explore instances of imperfect people trying to connect to loved ones and others despite fractured relationships and personal flaws. These are ordinary people striving to survive and thrive in situations reflective of today’s challenges. 

A wife can no longer deal with her husband's recent paralysis.  A husband desperately wants his wife to reconsider separating. A terminally ill man seeks to reconnect with his estranged daughter after cutting ties over an interracial marriage. A freelancing nun attempts to "save" a single mother from the perils of society.

Rosalia Scalia vigorously examines people at their best and their worst. We are invited to witness how people who love each other struggle to reconnect their fractured relationships in the face of traumas, personal flaws, and unspoken hurts. STUMBLING TOWARD GRACE combines loss and grief with humor and grace as characters navigate their unwise decisions, unexpected deaths, or their resentments polished into gems.

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The nineties have just come to a close when newly married twenty-somethings Ana and Paul abandon their deep-set roots in Jersey and move out west to Portland, Oregon. Soon after they settle into the sleepy, new city, Ana starts hanging out with Drew, her new boss, a mellow, long-haired skateboarder from So-Cal and the complete opposite in temperament to feisty Paul. Drew and Ana become fast friends. And it’s not long before everything that Ana thought she was building from scratch in a sluggish but thriving new city washes away with the relentless Northwest rains.

Salad Days vacillates between mid-nineties era Jersey and early aughts Portland, as we witness Ana trying desperately to be an adult, all the while attempting to repair a broken moral compass without an owner’s manual.  

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Would you be willing to kidnap your child to save his life and set sail in search of a doctor that may hold the key to his survival when everyone else has given up? When it means you may lose everything regardless of the outcome? Pacific by Trevor J. Houser discovers what a desperate father is willing to do to save his son’s life...even if it means braving deadly storms at home and on the run.

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Starting over is always easier among strangers. For Ford Carson, the process meant leaving behind the waves of South Florida, in order to forge a new life as a visual artist in the mountains of North Carolina. At the peak of his reinvention, he meets Grace Burnett—a young, wealthy Texas transplant in the midst of her own transformation. A mutual infatuation develops. But when Grace’s estranged husband arrives complications ensue. Matters only worsen when Ford’s own estranged son announces plans to visit for his eighteenth birthday. Thomas Calder’s debut novel explores the lasting impact of broken bonds and the unanticipated ways the past haunts those on the run.

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