PEN/Hemingway Award 2017: Complete list of winners

The 2017 PEN/Hemingway Award celebrated what might be the strongest debut in recent memory. Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing claimed the prize for best debut novel, marking a watershed moment for a book that had already captured readers’ hearts across the country. Gyasi’s multigenerational saga—tracing two half-sisters separated by geography and circumstance across centuries of African and African-American history—demonstrated exactly the kind of bold, ambitious storytelling that the PEN/Hemingway Award has championed since its inception in 1976.

The PEN/Hemingway Award, named after Ernest Hemingway and administered by PEN America, has long served as a proving ground for debut authors who arrive fully formed as literary voices. Homegoing was no exception, immediately establishing Gyasi as a major talent while introducing readers to a sprawling narrative that refused easy answers about family, identity, and historical reckoning. The novel’s recognition by this prestigious award added to its growing list of accolades and cemented its place in the cultural conversation about contemporary American fiction.

Here are the complete winners from the 2017 PEN/Hemingway Award:

Debut Novel

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi