# PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) for writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of physical and biological sciences. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000.
The award was founded by scientist and author Dr. Edward O. Wilson, activist and actor Harrison Ford, and the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. The award was inaugurated in 2011.
Examples of published works that exemplify the quality of writing the award is designed to acknowledge include Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and James Watson's The Double Helix (1969), which contribute 'to the public’s understanding of scientific principles at work in the world today.'
The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.

## Award winners

PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award winners and runners-up :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2011 | Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | Winner |
| 2011 | David Abram | Becoming Animal | Runner-up |
| 2012 | James Gleick | The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood | Winner |
| 2012 | Donovan Hohn | Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them | Runner-up |
| 2013 | Leonard Mlodinow | Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior | Winner |
| 2013 | David G. Haskell | The Forest Unseen | Runner-up |
| 2014 | Carl Hart | High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society | Winner |
| 2015 | Joshua Horwitz | War of the Whales: A True Story | Winner |
| 2016 | Lauren Redniss | Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future | Winner |
| 2016 | Cynthia Barnett | Rain: A Natural and Cultural History | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Joel K. Bourne Jr. | The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Tom Clynes | The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting, and How to Make a Star | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe | Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Luke Dittrich | Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets | Winner |
| 2017 | Dan Flores | Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Julian Guthrie | How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Hope Jahren | Lab Girl | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Emily Voigt | The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Lindsey Fitzharris | The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine | Winner |
| 2018 | David Baron | American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World | Shortlist |
| 2018 | David Montgomery | Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Ron Powers | No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Robert Sapolsky | Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Ben Goldfarb | Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter | Winner |
| 2019 | Vince Beiser | The World in a Grain | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Andrea Buchanan | The Beginning of Everything | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Lauren Slater | Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Carl Zimmer | She Has Her Mother’s Laugh | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Frans de Waal | Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves | Winner |
| 2020 | Patricia S. Churchland | Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Elizabeth Hennessy | On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galapagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Dahr Jamail | The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Nathaniel Rich | Losing Earth: A Recent History | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Jonathan C. Slaght | Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl | Winner |
| 2021 | Jennifer Ackerman | The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Rebecca Giggs | Fathoms: The World in the Whale | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Emily Levesque | The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Sonia Shah | The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Catherine Raven | Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship | Winner |
| 2022 | Lauren Aguirre | The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind What We Remember — A Medical Mystery | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Lisa Wells | Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Carl Zimmer | Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Florence Williams | Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey | Winner |
| 2023 | Rachel E. Gross | Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage | Shortlist |
| 2023 | David George Haskell | Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Manil Suri | The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Rosanna Xia | California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline | Winner |
| 2024 | Brad Fox | The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Ben Goldfarb | Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Leah Hazard | Womb: The Inside Story of How It All Began | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Charles Barber | In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took on the US Army | Shortlist |