The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction is awarded by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) biennially "to a distinguished book of general nonfiction possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues which have been published in the United States during the previous two calendar years. It is intended that the winning book possess the qualities of intellectual rigor, perspicuity of expression, and stylistic elegance conspicuous in the writings of author and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, whose four dozen books and countless other publications continue to provide an important and incisive commentary on the American social, intellectual and political scene."PEN American Center Literary Awards
The winner receives $10,000.
The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centres around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.
Honorees +Award winners, runner-ups, and finalists Year Author Title Publisher Result 2007House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American PowerMariner Books and Hank KlibanoffKnopfFiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq Penguin Press2009Penguin Group)Samuel Johnson: The StruggleBasic BooksPosthumous Keats: A Personal BiographyW.W. Norton & Co.2011Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison EmpirePicadorCultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / IraqW.W. Norton & Co.Random House2013Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai UndercityRandom HouseMoby-DuckPenguin BooksIron Curtain DoubledayGod's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of MedicineRiverhead Books2015Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged HospitalCrownOur DeclarationLiveright and Steve FainaruLeague of DenialCrown ArchetypePalgrave MacmillanThis Changes EverythingSimon & Schuster2017Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American CityCrown2019In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable WorkersCrown2021Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer RadicalsW. W. Norton & Company2022All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family KeepsakeRandom HouseInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American CityRandom HouseHalfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass IncarcerationLittle Brown and CompanyLet the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993Farrar, Straus and GirouxHow the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across AmericaLittle Brown and Company2023Simon & Schuster Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the BorderlandsW. W. Norton & CompanySouth to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a NationHarperCollins PublishersPegasus BooksSolito: A MemoirHogarth Press2024Algonquin Books We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in AmericaFarrar, Straus and GirouxCobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our LivesSt. Martin's PressOutrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy—And What We Can Do About ItLegacy LitFire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter WorldAlfred A. Knopf2025In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United StatesThe Lucky Ones: A MemoirCrownThe Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of IraqPenguin PressThe Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LAAstra House2026Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning Knopf Atria Publishing Group St. Martin's PressNothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity Atria Publishing GroupWe Survived the Night Knopf
References
External links PEN America PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction