The PEN/Faulkner Foundation revealed the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award, one of the country’s most prestigious fiction prizes, with books by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, Katie Kitamura, and Percival Everett among those making the cut.
Johnson was nominated for her debut story collection My Monticello, which was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and is shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize.
Kitamura made the list for Intimacies; her novel was previously longlisted for the National Book Award.
Everett earned a nomination for The Trees, which is also a finalist for this year’s PEN/Jean Stein Award. Everett was recently named the winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.
Nawaaz Ahmed made the longlist for Radiant Fugitives, as did Rabih Alameddine for The Wrong End of the Telescope, Jai Chakrabarti for A Play for the End of the World, and Carolina de Robertis for The President and the Frog.
Also nominated were Carolyn Ferrell for Dear Miss Metropolitan, Imbolo Mbue for How Beautiful We Were, and Claire Oshetsky for Chouette.
The longlist will be winnowed down to a five-book shortlist, to be revealed next month, and the winner will be announced in April.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
