PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: Julie Otsuka (2012)

This event took place on May 5th 2012 at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka has been selected as the winner of the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It is a precise, poetic novel that tells the story of Japanese picture brides brought to California from Japan in the early twentieth century.

Ms. Otsuka and the four finalists will be celebrated during the 32nd Annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Ceremony, which celebrates the winning novel as “first among equals.” The four finalists are:

• Russell Banks for Lost Memory of Skin
• Don DeLillo for The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
• Anita Desai for The Artist of Disappearance
• Steven Millhauser for We Others: New and Selected Stories

Three judges, chosen annually by the directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, select four finalists and one winner from among the more than 350 submitted works by American authors published in the U.S. during the 2011 calendar year, making this the largest peer-juried award in the country. This year’s judges were Marita Golden, Maureen Howard, and Steve Yarbrough.