The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award celebrates writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of physical and biological sciences. The winner receives a cash award of $10,000 and will be honored at the PEN Literary Awards.
The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award was founded by scientist and author Dr. Edward O. Wilson, activist and actor Harrison Ford, and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. The award is also supported by James and Cathy Stone. The inaugural award was conferred in 2011.
Examples of published works that exemplify the quality of writing the award is designed to acknowledge include Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring (1962), Dr. James Watson’s The Double Helix (1969), Lewis Thomas’s The Lives of a Cell (1978), and Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979).
2022 Finalists
The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind What We Remember — A Medical Mystery, Lauren Aguirre (Pegasus Books)
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (Bold Type Books)
Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship, Catherine Raven (Spiegel & Grau)
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, Lisa Wells (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, Carl Zimmer (Dutton Books)
The winner will be announced at the Literary Awards Ceremony on February 28, 2022 at 8pm at The Town Hall in New York City.
2022 Longlist Finalists
The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind What We Remember — A Medical Mystery, Lauren Aguirre (Pegasus Books)
This Is the Voice, John Colapinto (Simon & Schuster)
Holding Back the River: The Struggle Against Nature on America’s Waterways, Tyler J. Kelley (Avid Reader Press)
Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Avi Loeb (Mariner Books)
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (Bold Type Books)
Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship, Catherine Raven (Spiegel & Grau)
Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade, Nathaniel Rich (MCD)
Count Down: How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race, Shanna H. Swan (Scribner)
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, Lisa Wells (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, Carl Zimmer (Dutton Books)
2022 Judges
This year’s PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award judges are Jonathan Safran Foer, Michele Harper, Lauren Redniss.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of three award-winning and internationally best-selling novels: Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (both Houghton Mifflin), and Here I Am (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), as well as two works of nonfiction: Eating Animals and The New American Haggadah (both Little Brown). His books are published in over 30 languages. His most recent work of nonfiction is We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, and his next novel, Escape from Children’s Hospital, will be published in 2022 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. Her first book, The Beauty in Breaking, was a New York Times Best Seller.
Lauren Redniss is the author of several works of visual nonfiction and a MacArthur Foundation fellow. Her books include Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future, winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Her most recent book is Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West. She has been a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow at The New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and at New America Foundation, and Artist-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History.
Past Winners
Jonathan C. Slaght, Frans de Waal, Ben Goldfarb, Lindsey Fitzharris, Luke Dittrich, Lauren Redniss, Joshua Horwitz, Dr. Carl Hart, Leonard Mlodinow, James Gleick, and Siddhartha Mukherjee.
PEN America Mourns Passing of E.O. Wilson
December 27, 2021
(New York, NY)
“As a scientist, E.O. Wilson inspired generations with his curiosity, rigorous research, and passion for discovery,” said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, senior director of Literary Programs at PEN America. “As a writer, he made complex concepts not just accessible but alive to a general audience. His books were influential in science and in the wider world, receiving two Pulitzer Prizes and topping The New York Times bestseller list. Dr. Wilson’s work will continue to resonate with readers and we could not be more proud to celebrate this tremendous legacy with the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, which since 2011 has recognized the writers who follow in his footsteps, with the support of Jim and Cathy Stone and the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. In recent years, PEN America has awarded the prize to writers including Siddhartha Mukherjee, Lindsey Fitzharris, and Jonathan C. Slaght.”
