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Wednesday the PEN American Center released its lengthy list of annual book prizes. Former City Paper staffer Katherine Boo took the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which is great news, but not a shocker for a much–decorated book.
The big surprise was the recipient of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, which is awarded to a debut work of fiction: Sergio De La Pava‘s novel A Naked Singularity. The book has a storied history in itself. De La Pava self-published the novel in 2008, and being a 700-page postmodern anti-thriller with little promotional muscle behind it, it should have died a quick death. But the rabid enthusiasm of a handful of critics helped get the book into the hands of the University of Chicago Press, which gave it a wider release last year.
One of the three judges who selected A Naked Singularity is Columbia Heights novelist and short-story writer Danielle Evans (right), who won the PEN/Bingham in 2011 for her debut collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. “The biggest thing is the range of that book,” she says. “It does a lot of hard-to-pull-off things really, really well. It’s one of those books that can be a little disorienting at first…but there’s a really singular, distinctive narrative voice… It’s a 700-page book, so there’s a lot to be impressed with, but that’s what I was really struck by.”
Recognizing authors who operate outside the big publishing machine may be a trend with the prize. Paul W. Morris, PEN American Center’s director of membership, marketing, and literary awards, said that there was a “huge spike” in the number of submissions for the PEN/Bingham prize—-approximately 60 percent—-which he attributes in large part to last year’s winner, Vanessa Veselka‘s Zazen, published by a small, newish indie press, Red Lemonade. “That blew open the doors for a lot of smaller publishers to come in.” (Among the finalists for this year’s prize is Jac Jemc‘s novel My Only Wife, published by tiny Dzanc Books.)
But A Naked Singularity but may not have had a chance in its self-published state. The PEN awards run on fee-based submissions, and the fee is typically waived for smaller presses. But were a self-published author to pay to gain entry, “it’s going to be something the [awards] committee discusses,” Morris says. “Traditionally, we don’t consider them,” he adds.
Now that her judging duties are wrapped up, Evans is back at work on her first novel, a draft of which she recently completed. “I’m really excited about where I’m at with it,” she says. “But where I’m at is not done.”
Correction: Based on information provided by Paul W. Morris, the original version of this post said that the PEN Literary Awards have no formal policy on considering self-published books. But after this post ran, Morris clarified that PEN actually does have a policy against them, as made clear on the organization’s website. The post has been corrected.