The PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction is awarded by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) "to a distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature." Initially carrying a stipend of US$40,000, the award was created with the cooperation of the

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only w ...

estate and through a grant from Evelyn Stefansson Nef. Announcing the first recipient of the award (Bellow's close friend

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...

), PEN president

Ron Chernow Ronald Chernow (; born March 3, 1949) is an American writer, journalist and biographer. He has written bestselling historical non-fiction biographies. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2011 American History Book Prize for hi ...

said the award honors "one of America’s greatest writers...whose work over a forty-year career exemplified the capacity of fiction to encompass the totality of human experience. We are confident that this Award will help to recognize and perpetuate the qualities so evident in Saul Bellow’s writings." The award was first given in 2007. The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.

Award winners

*2007 —

*2009 —

Cormac McCarthy Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr., July 20, 1933) is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He is known for his gr ...

*2010 —

Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, perf ...

*2012 —

E. L. Doctorow Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction. He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included ...

*2014 —

Louise Erdrich Louise Erdrich ( ; born Karen Louise Erdrich, June 7, 1954) is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian ...

*2016 —

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...

*2018 —

Edmund White Edmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him (and later ) de l'Ordr ...

Notes

External links

PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
{{DEFAULTSORT:PEN Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction PEN America awards Awards established in 2007 2007 establishments in the United States Literary awards honoring lifetime achievement