PEN/Faulkner 2024: What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez takes the prize

The PEN/Faulkner Award recognizes the year’s most compelling American fiction. The 2024 winner:

• Fiction — What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez.

A piercing, funny, and tender debut about sisters, loss, and the slippery afterlives of disappearance, Jimenez’s novel braids pop culture with Puerto Rican family history to ask who gets to be seen and believed.

See the year at a glance: All awards in 2024. Compare with other prizes via the faceted browse.