PEN America honors Edwidge Danticat for career achievements

PEN America has announced that Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat will receive the PEN/Nabakov Award for Achievement in International Literature as part of its 2026 Literary Awards showcase.

An acclaimed fiction writer and essayist, Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities and a professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies.

According to a news release Friday from the literary organization, “The PEN/Nabokov prize recognizes Edwidge Danticat’s place as perhaps the most prominent, critically acclaimed Haitian-American author of her time. Her work has connected millions of readers globally, both immigrants and non-immigrants, to Haitian culture and the immigrant experience in the United States, while expanding the definition of ‘Americanness.’”

The panel of judges for the award wrote that Danticat, in her “border-transcending” writing, “has shaped the landscape of fiction and non-fiction alike, sometimes with the sweeping force of her stories about identity and the diaspora, sometimes with her mournful and steady framing of grief as we know it.” 

A contributor to The New Yorker since 1999, Danticat is the author of 18 books, including "Breath, Eyes, Memory," an Oprah Book Club selection, "Krik? Krak!," a National Book Award finalist, "The Farming of Bones," an American Book Award winner; the novels-in-stories, "The Dew Breaker," "Claire of the Sea Light," and "The Art of Death," a National Book Critics Circle finalist for Criticism. She has written seven books for children and young adults, a travel narrative, "After the Dance," and two essay collections, "Create Dangerously" and "We're Alone.”

“We’re Alone” was recently named a finalist in the non-fiction category of the National Book Critics Circle awards, as well as in the creative nonfiction category of the Firecracker Awards, given annually by the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses. 

The awards ceremony includes the conferring of 10 book prizes to 50 finalists also named in the press release. The event will be held Tuesday, March 31, at The Town Hall in New York City. Famously called the “Oscars for books,” the ceremony features live music performances, dramatic readings, and authors’ celebratory remarks on stage as they are revealed as winners.