ABOUT THE PEN/ROBERT J. DAU SHORT STORY PRIZE FOR EMERGING WRITERS

THE PEN/ROBERT J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers recognizes twelve fiction writers for a debut short story published in a print or online literary magazine. The annual award was offered for the first time during PEN America’s 2017 Literary Awards cycle.

The twelve winning stories are selected by a committee of three judges. The writers of the stories each receives a two-thousand-dollar cash prize and is honored at the annual PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City. Every year, Catapult will publish the winning stories in Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize.

This award is generously supported by the family of the late Robert J. Dau, whose commitment to the literary arts has made him a fitting namesake for this career-launching prize. Mr. Dau was born and raised in Petoskey, a city in northern Michigan in close proximity to Walloon Lake, where Ernest Hemingway had spent his summers as a young boy and which serves as the backdrop for Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring. Petoskey is also known for being where Hemingway determined that he would commit to becoming a writer. This proximity to literary history ignited the Dau family’s interest in promoting emerging voices in fiction and spotlighting the next great fiction writer.