Sherman Alexie Wins PEN/Faulkner Award

This week, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation named Sherman Alexie's War Dances the winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. War Dances triumphed over close to 350 novels and short story collections by American authors published in the U.S. during the 2009 calendar year. Submissions came from over 90 publishing houses, including small and academic presses.

Among Alexie's previous honors are a 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (a staff favorite here at FFT), and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Alexie and the prize finalists -- Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna; Lorraine M. López for Homicide Survivors Picnic, and Other Stories; and Lorrie Moore for A Gate at the Stairs -- will be honored during the 30th anniversary PEN/Faulkner Award Ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, May 8.