PEN/Faulkner Award 2025: Complete list of winners

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction has long served as one of American literature’s most prestigious honors, celebrating work that pushes literary boundaries and reflects the complexity of the human experience. This year’s announcement doesn’t disappoint: Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain takes the top prize, a selection that affirms the award’s continued commitment to finding voices that challenge and move readers in equal measure. The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which administers this award alongside PEN America, has been recognizing exceptional American fiction for decades, and Greenwell’s win represents the kind of intimate, philosophically rigorous work the award has championed throughout its history.

Greenwell’s Small Rain marks a significant moment in contemporary American letters. Known for his emotionally excavatory prose and unflinching exploration of desire, intimacy, and self-understanding, Greenwell brings a distinctive sensibility to the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award shortlist. The novel’s selection underscores a broader trend in recent years toward fiction that privileges psychological depth and formal innovation—work that demands something from readers while offering profound rewards in return. For those tracking the evolution of American fiction and the values upheld by major literary institutions, this year’s PEN/Faulkner winners offer compelling insights into where contemporary letters are headed.

Below, you’ll find complete details on this year’s winner and what makes this selection meaningful within the context of modern American fiction.

Fiction

• Small Rain by Garth Greenwell