The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to an American author. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receive US$5000. The foundation brings the winner and runners-up to Washington, DC to read from their works at the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation is an outgrowth of William Faulkner's generosity in donating his 1950 Nobel Prize winnings, "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers."
The award was first given in 1981.
