# PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to an author for a book of original collected essays. The award was founded by PEN Member and author Barbaralee Diamonstein and Carl Spielvogel, former New York Times columnist, "to preserve the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature." The winner receives a cash award of $10,000.
The award was on hiatus from 2005 to 2010.
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

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay winners :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1990 | Bernard Knox | Essays Ancient and Modern | Winner |
| 1991 | Martha Nussbaum | Love's Knowledge | Winner |
| 1992 | David Morris | The Culture of Pain | Winner |
| 1993 | Frederick Crews | The Critics Bear It Away: American Fiction and the Academy | Winner |
| 1994 | Stanley Fish | There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and it's a Good Thing, Too | Winner |
| 1995 | John Brinckerhoff Jackson | A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time | Winner |
| 1996 | Thomas Nagel | Other Minds | Winner |
| 1997 | Cynthia Ozick | Fame and Folly | Winner |
| 1998 | Adam Hochschild | Finding the Trapdoor | Winner |
| 1999 | Marilynne Robinson | The Death of Adam | Winner |
| 2000 | Annie Dillard | For the Time Being | Winner |
| 2001 | David Quammen | The Boilerplate Rhino | Winner |
| 2002 | David Bromwich | Skeptical Music | Winner |
| 2003 | William H. Gass | Test of Time | Winner |
| 2004 | Stewart Justman | Seeds of Mortality | Winner |
| 2011 | Mark Slouka | Essays from the Nick of Time | Winner |
| 2012 | Christopher Hitchens | Arguably | Winner |
| 2013 | Robert Hass | What Light Can Do | Winner |
| 2013 | Jill Lepore | The Story of America | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Daniel Mendelsohn | Waiting for the Barbarians | Shortlist |
| 2014 | James Wolcott | Critical Mass | Winner |
| 2014 | Rebecca Solnit | The Faraway Nearby | Shortlist |
| 2014 | David Sedaris | Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Janet Malcolm | Forty-One False Starts | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Ian Buruma | Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadow of War | Winner |
| 2015 | David Bromwich | Moral Imagination | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Charles D’Ambrosio | Loitering | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Leslie Jamison | The Empathy Exams | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Angela Pelster | Limber | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Between the World and Me | Winner |
| 2016 | Renata Adler | After the Tall Timber: Collected Non-Fiction | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Susan Howe | The Quarry | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Marilynne Robinson | The Givenness of Things: Essays | Shortlist |
| 2016 | David L. Ulin | Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Angela Morales | The Girls In My Town: Essays | Winner |
| 2018 | Ursula K. Le Guin | No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters | Winner |
| 2019 | Michelle Tea | Against Memoir | Winner |
| 2020 | Deborah Fleming | Resurrection of the Wild | Winner |
| 2020 | Eve Babitz | I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Leslie Jamison | Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Emily Nussbaum | I Like To Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Jia Tolentino | Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Barbara Ehrenreich | Had I Known: Collected Essays | Winner |
| 2022 | Margaret Renkl | Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South | Winner |
| 2022 | Hanif Abdurraqib | A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance | Shortlist |
| 2022 | André Aciman | Homo Irrealis: Essays | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Teju Cole | Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Ann Patchett | These Precious Days: Essays | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Judith Thurman | A Left-Handed Woman | Winner |
| 2023 | Jhumpa Lahiri | Translating Myself and Others | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Peter Orner | Still No Word From You | Shortlist |
| 2023 | David Sedaris | Happy-Go-Lucky | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Alison Townsend | The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home | Shortlist |