# PEN Open Book Award

The PEN Open Book Award (known as the Beyond Margins Award through 2009) is an award intended to foster racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities, and works to establish access for diverse literary groups to the publishing industry. Created in 1991 by the PEN American Center (today PEN America), the award ensures custodians of language and literature are representative of the American people.
The Committee discusses mutual concerns and strategies for advancing writing and professional activities, and coordinates Open Book events. While multiple awards were presented in previous years, the PEN Open Book Award now presents one award every year to books published in the United States (but without citizenship or residency requirements) by "authors of color who have not received wide media coverage".
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.

## Honorees
### PEN Open Book Award

After 2010, the Beyond Margins Award was renamed the PEN Open Book Award.
PEN Open Book Award winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2011 | Manu Joseph | Serious Men | Winner |
| 2011 | John Murillo | Up Jump the Boogie | Runner Up |
| 2012 | Siddhartha Deb | The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India | Winner |
| 2012 | Helon Habila | Oil on Water | Finalist |
| 2012 | Quan Barry | Water Puppets | Finalist |
| 2013 | Gina Apostol | Gun Dealers' Daughter | Winner (tie) |
| 2013 | Kevin Young | The Grey Album | Winner (tie) |
| 2013 | Francine J. Harris | Allegiance | Finalist |
| 2013 | Brenda Shaughnessy | Our Andromeda | Finalist |
| 2013 | Natalie Diaz | When My Brother Was an Aztec | Finalist |
| 2014 | Nina McConigley | Cowboys and East Indians | Winner (tie) |
| 2014 | Ruth Ellen Kocher | domina Un/blued | Winner (tie) |
| 2014 | Kwame Dawes | Duppy Conqueror | Finalist |
| 2014 | Taiye Selasi | Ghana Must Go | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jennifer Foerster | Leaving Tulsa | Finalist |
| 2015 | Claudia Rankine | Citizen: An American Lyric | Winner |
| 2015 | Rabih Alameddine | An Unnecessary Woman | Finalist |
| 2015 | Roxane Gay | An Untamed State | Finalist |
| 2015 | Teju Cole | Every Day Is for the Thief | Finalist |
| 2015 | Samrat Upadhyay | The City Son | Finalist |
| 2016 | Rick Barot | Chord | Winner |
| 2016 | Reginald Dwayne Betts | Bastards of the Reagan Era | Finalist |
| 2016 | Vievee Francis | Forest Primeval: Poems | Finalist |
| 2016 | Lauret Savoy | Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape | Finalist |
| 2016 | Marie Mutsuki Mockett | Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey | Finalist |
| 2017 | Helen Oyeyemi | What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours | Winner |
| 2017 | Monica Youn | Blackacre | Finalist |
| 2017 | Solmaz Sharif | Look | Finalist |
| 2017 | Jamaal May | The Big Book of Exit Strategies | Finalist |
| 2017 | Petina Gappah | The Book of Memory | Finalist |
| 2018 | Alexis Okeowo | A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa | Winner |
| 2018 | Kei Miller | Augustown | Finalist |
| 2018 | Erika L. Sánchez | Lessons on Expulsion: Poems | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jessica B. Harris | My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2018 | Nicole Sealey | Ordinary Beast: Poems | Finalist |
| 2019 | Nafissa Thompson-Spires | Heads of the Colored People | Winner |
| 2019 | Shauna Barbosa | Cape Verdean Blues | Finalist |
| 2019 | Jenny Xie | Eye Level | Finalist |
| 2019 | Tyrese Coleman | How to Sit: A Memoir in Stories and Essays | Finalist |
| 2019 | Ángel García | Teeth Never Sleep | Finalist |
| 2020 | Brandon Shimoda | The Grave on the Wall | Winner |
| 2020 | Camonghne Felix | Build Yourself a Boat | Finalist |
| 2020 | Carmen Giménez Smith | Be Recorder | Finalist |
| 2020 | Maya Phillips | Erou | Finalist |
| 2020 | Maurice Carlos Ruffin | We Cast a Shadow | Finalist |
| 2021 | Asako Serizawa | Inheritors | Winner |
| 2021 | Mei-mei Berssenbrugge | A Treatise on Stars | Finalist |
| 2021 | Souvankham Thammavongsa | How to Pronounce Knife: Stories | Finalist |
| 2021 | Hafizah Geter | Un-American | Finalist |
| 2021 | S*an D. Henry-Smith | Wild Peach | Finalist |
| 2022 | Divya Victor | Curb | Winner |
| 2022 | Rebecca Hall | Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts | Finalist |
| 2022 | Rajiv Mohabir | Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir | Finalist |
| 2022 | Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint | Names for Light: A Family History | Finalist |
| 2022 | Elissa Washuta | White Magic | Finalist |
| 2023 | Hafizah Augustus Geter | The Black Period | Winner |
| 2023 | Ramona Emerson | Shutter | Finalist |
| 2023 | Casey Rocheteau | Gorgoneion | Finalist |
| 2023 | Paul Tran | All The Flowers Kneeling | Finalist |
| 2023 | Toya Wolfe | Last Summer on State Street | Finalist |

### Beyond Margins Award

Prior to 2010, the PEN Open Book Award was referred to as the Beyond Margins Award, and several books were selected per year as joint winners.
Beyond Margins Award winners :
| Year | Author | Title |
| Earlier winners | Giannina Braschi | Yo-Yo Boing! |
| Earlier winners | Timothy Liu | Say Goodnight |
| Earlier winners | Bino Realuyo (ed.) | The NuyorAsian Anthology |
| Earlier winners | April Robinson | |
| 2002 | Meena Alexander | Illiterate Heart |
| 2002 | Luis Francia | Eye of the Fish |
| 2002 | Joy Harjo | A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales |
| 2002 | Victor LaValle | Slapboxing with Jesus: Stories |
| 2002 | Nelly Rosario | Song of the Water Saints |
| 2004 | Laila Halaby | West of the Jordan: A Novel |
| 2004 | Suki Kim | The Interpreter |
| 2004 | Nasdijj | The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping |
| 2004 | Willie Perdomo | Smoking Lovely |
| 2004 | April Reynolds | Knee-Deep in Wonder: A Novel |
| 2005 | Faith Adiele | Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun |
| 2005 | Raquel Cepeda (ed.) | And It Don’t Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years |
| 2005 | Lan Samantha Chang | Inheritance |
| 2005 | Lolita Hernandez | Autopsy of an Engine, and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant |
| 2005 | Ishle Yi Park | The Temperature of This Water |
| 2006 | Richard Blanco | Directions to the Beach of the Dead |
| 2006 | Andrew Lam | Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora |
| 2006 | Ed Bok Lee | Real Karaoke People |
| 2006 | Caryl Phillips | Dancing in the Dark |
| 2006 | Jennifer Tseng | The Man with My Face |
| 2007 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Half of a Yellow Sun |
| 2007 | Ernest Hardy | Blood Beats, Vol. 1 |
| 2007 | Harryette Mullen | Recyclopedia |
| 2007 | Alberto Ríos | Theater of Night |
| 2008 | Chris Abani | Song for Night |
| 2008 | Amiri Baraka | Tales of the Out and the Gone |
| 2008 | Frances Hwang | Transparency |
| 2008 | Naeem Murr | The Perfect Man |
| 2008 | Joseph M. Marshall III | The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn |
| 2009 | Uwem Akpan | Say You're One of Them |
| 2009 | Juan Felipe Herrera | Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems |
| 2009 | Lily Hoang | Changing |
| 2010 | Sherwin Bitsui | Flood Song |
| 2010 | Robin D. G. Kelley | Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original |
| 2010 | Canyon Sam | Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History |