PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

PEN America

PEN America works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.

PEN America Literary Awards

Founded in 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards honor the most outstanding voices in literature across diverse genres, including fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, and drama. With the help of our partners, PEN America confers over 20 distinct awards, fellowships, and grants each year, awarding over $370,000 to writers and translators annually.

The PEN America Literary Awards program celebrates literary excellence, encourages global discourse, champions important voices, and brings new books to life through our publication awards. From exciting new voices to underrecognized masters of their craft, PEN America honors challenging, thought-provoking, genre-defying writers.

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is an annual award which honors a seasoned writer whose collection of essays is an expansion on their corpus of work. The award confers a cash purse of $15,000.

PEN America Member, former PEN America Trustee, and author Barbaralee Diamonstein and Carl Spielvogel, former New York Times columnist, founded the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay to preserve the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.

The award is for a book of individual essays, either exploring one specific theme or a range of subjects, not a book-length work of nonfiction. Individual essays may have been previously published elsewhere; however, if the submitted book includes work previously published in a collection by the author, the submitted book should include significant new work. Candidates must be permanent U.S. residents or American citizens and living at the time of the book’s publication. First time and debut authors are ineligible, as the award is not intended for the discovery of new writers.

All winners, finalists, and longlisters for this award are eligible to receive PEN America’s official emblems.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

• Eligible titles must have been published by a U.S. trade publisher between January 1 and December 31 of the applicable calendar year.
• Candidates must be permanent U.S. residents or American citizens.
• There are no restrictions on the subject matter of the essays. Essays may deal either with a range of subjects or may explore one specific theme.
• The author must have previously published at least one collection of essays. First collections of essays are not eligible for the award.
• The book must be published by a single author.
• Individual essays may have been previously published in magazines, journals, or anthologies.
• If you submit a book for this award, you may not submit it for any additional PEN America Literary Award, with the exception of the PEN Open Book Award. Please note that the PEN/Faulkner Award is not considered a PEN America Literary Award.

Ineligibility

• Self-published books are ineligible.
• Anthologies with multiple authors are ineligible.
• Authors may not submit their own books.
• Writers who are also current PEN America staff or interns, trustees, or chairs of Member committees are not eligible for any of the Awards and/or Grants offered by the Literary Awards Program. Additionally, all current members of the Literary Awards Committee are ineligible.