Named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize funds to create an award for young writers, and affiliated with PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists), the international writers' organization, the PEN/Faulkner Award was founded by writers in 1980 to honor their peers. The award judges-working fiction writers all--each read approximately 300 novels and short story collections to select a winner and four nomineers.
1. 2009 - Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
A Gatsby-like tale of cricket in post-9/11 New York as narrated by a Dutch banker.2. 2008 - The Great Man by Kate Christensen
The unfolding of the lives of the women the late, great New York painter Oscar Feldman left behind.3. 2007 - Everyman by Philip Roth
Philip Roth turns his attention to one man's confrontation with mortality.4. 2006 - The March by E.L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow fictionalizes General Sherman's historic march through Georgia and the Carolinas at the close of the American Civil War.
5. 2005 - War Trash by Ha Jin
National Book Award winner, Ha Jin, applies historical detail to the plight of soldiers trying to survive a POW camp during the Korean war.6. 2004 - The Early Stories by John Updike
Almost all of the short fiction that Updike published between 1954 and 1975.7. 2003 - The Caprices by Sabina Murray
Individual lives in Southeast Asia, Australia, and the United States during World War II are featured in this collection of nine short stories.8. 2002 - Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
A party in the home of the vice president of an unnamed South American country is interrupted by terrorists. The unforseeable ensues.9. 2001 - The Human Stain by Philip Roth
A distinguished classics professor is forced into retirement for perceived racism, but the truth about the man is beyond the belief of even his accusers.10. 2000 - Waiting by Ha Jin
Chinese Doctor Lin Kong's love for two women contrasts ancient China with the China of the Cultural Revolution while exploring the universal struggle of the individual with society and his own heart.