Last week was overtaken by bad news but here is a good news story – Nick Drnaso is once again up for for a literary award, this time making the PEN/Jean Stein Literary Award longlist for his most recent graphic novel Acting Class (Drawn & Quarterly).
PEN said,
“PEN America is honored to announce the Longlists for the 2023 Literary Awards. Our Awards are juried by panels of esteemed, award-winning authors, editors, translators, and critics. These authors are committed to recognizing their contemporaries, from promising debut writers to those who have had a continuous, lasting impact on the literary landscape…
“The 2023 Literary Awards will confer over $350,000 to writers and translators. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, translation, and more, these Longlisted books are dynamic, diverse, and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence.”
We will have to wait until next month to see if Drnaso makes the shortlist, and the winners will be declared at a ceremony on March 2.
The three judges for the PEN/Jean Stein Literary Award are all from the poetry and prose space. They are Lauren Groff, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and Madeleine Thien.
Acting Class, a book about ten complete strangers looking for change, has done very well critically since release – and even before release it was drawing attention, with eight territories acquiring foreign language rights to the book a full year before it was released.
Drnaso seems to have a knack for getting onto prestigious literary award lists. His last book, 2018’s Sabrina, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize – becoming the first graphic novel to do so – that same year.
