Hope you have cat3moviesome extra time for reading -- you're going to want to sink your teeth into these books.
On Wednesday, PEN America announced the finalists for the 2017 PEN Literary Awards, which honor the best and brightest in literature, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, translation, drama and poetry. Mashable announced PEN's award longlist in December and now the finalists have been revealed.
SEE ALSO: MashReads Podcast: Here are our favorite books of 2016They include Homegoingby Yaa Gyasi and The Mothers by Brit Bennett, two of 2016's lauded debut fiction titles, as well as Evictedby Matthew Desmond,a much praised investigation into eviction and poverty in America.
Check out the finalists below before the winners are announced on Feb. 22.
PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award
(for any book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit and impact)
Known and Strange Thingsby Teju Cole
Olioby Tyehimba Jess
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Betweenby Hisham Matar
Dark Moneyby Jane Mayer
The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead
PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott
We Show What We Have Learnedby Clare Beams
The Mothersby Brit Bennett
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Hurt People by Cote Smith
PEN/ Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood by Belle Boggs
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and The Mind by Siri Hustvedt
The Girls in My Town by Angela Morales
Becoming Earth by Eva Saulitis
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
The Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iranby Laura Secor
Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship by Anjan Sundaram
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable PEN/ E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight by Julian Guthrie
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World's Most Coveted Fish by Emily Voigt
PEN Open Book Award
(for an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2016)
The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah
The Big Book of Exit Strategies by Jamaal May
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
Look by Solmaz Sharif
Blackarce by Monica Youn
PEN/ ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing
The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers by Michael Leahy
Catching the Sky by Colten Moore with Keith O’Brien
Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA by Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss
Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town by S.L. Price
Fastpitch: The Untold History of the Softball and the Women Who Made the Game by Erica Westly
PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson
A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley by Jane Kamensky
Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow
Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand
PEN Translation Prize
(for literary prose)
Confessions by Rabee Jaber, translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Between Life and Death by Yoram Kaniuk, translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav
Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap, translated from the German by Tess Lewis
Justine by Iben Mondrup, translated from the Danish by Kerri A. Pierce
The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
Pearl: A New Verse Translationtranslated from the Middle English by Simon Armitage
Abyssby Ya Hsien, translated from the Chinese by John Balcom
Preludes and Fuguesby Emmanuel Moses, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
In Praise of Defeatby Abdellatif Laâbi, translated from the French by Donald Nicholson Smith
Absolute Solitudeby Dulce Maria Loynaz, translated from the Spanish by James O'Connor
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