PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
# PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award

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."

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.

## Award winners

| Year | Author | Title |
| - | - | - |
| 2007 | James Carroll | House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power |
| 2009 | Steve Coll | The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century |
| 2011 | Robert Perkinson | Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire |
| 2013 | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity |
| 2015 | Sheri Fink | Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital |
| 2017 | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City |
| 2019 | Bernice Yeung | In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers |
| 2021 | Saidiya Hartman | Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals |
| 2023 | Eve Fairbanks | The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning |
