Living Canon

PEN/Faulkner Award 2003: Complete list of winners

The 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award recognized Sabina Murray’s stunning debut novel The Caprices, a sweeping historical fiction that captures the intersection of art, colonialism, and human desire across continents and centuries. Murray’s win marked a significant moment for the award, which has long championed literary excellence in American fiction and remains one of the most prestigious honors a writer can receive. The PEN/Faulkner Award—celebrating its legacy as a peer-judged prize voted on by fellow authors rather than a committee of critics—continues to champion bold, innovative voices, and Murray’s intricate narrative structure and layered exploration of historical complexity proved deeply resonant with her fellow writers.

What makes Murray’s victory particularly noteworthy is how The Caprices defies easy categorization. The novel weaves together multiple perspectives and time periods to explore the relationship between a Portuguese cartographer and a Javanese princess, ultimately questioning whose stories get told and how history itself becomes a kind of fiction. This thematic ambition aligned perfectly with the PEN/Faulkner Award’s tradition of honoring fiction that takes creative risks and demands engagement from its readers. For those tracking the PEN Faulkner Award winners or following the evolution of American letters in the early 2000s, Murray’s recognition signaled an important shift toward more globally conscious, formally inventive literary fiction.

Below, you’ll find complete details about this year’s honorees.

Fiction