PEN/Hemingway Award 2010: Complete list of winners

The PEN/Hemingway Award has long celebrated the arrival of genuinely promising debut fiction writers, and the 2010 winner proved exactly why this prize matters. Brigid Pasulka’s A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True captured the award for debut fiction that year, announcing the arrival of a novelist with considerable range and emotional intelligence. Pasulka’s novel, which weaves together the stories of a Polish family across generations and continents, demonstrated the kind of ambitious storytelling and lyrical prose that the Hemingway Award judges look for—work that shows real literary merit while possessing the kind of readability that Hemingway himself championed.

The PEN/Hemingway Award (officially the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award) has become one of the most prestigious recognitions for first-time novelists since its establishment in 1976. It carries particular weight because it honors not just any debut, but debuts that show mastery of the craft and promise of a significant literary career ahead. Pasulka’s win that year fit that tradition perfectly, signaling to readers and the literary establishment alike that here was a writer worth watching. Her novel’s exploration of memory, displacement, and family bonds across the twentieth century resonated with the award’s focus on strong, substantive fiction that endures.

Below, you’ll find the complete details of the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Award winner and what made this year’s selection particularly notable.

Debut Novel

• A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka