PEN/Faulkner Foundation
William Faulkner said, "the young writer is … demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it."
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It accomplishes its goals by choosing three noted writers of fiction each year to select the winner and four runners-up of the PEN/Faulkner Awards for Fiction; by presenting a series of readings by noted writers of fiction at the Folger Shakespeare Library and other venues; and by sponsoring the Writers in Schools program in which the authors in the reading series teach classes in Washington public high schools.
When William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, he gave a speech memorable for its insistence on the survival of all that is noble in the human spirit, especially the talent and inspiration of the writer. Then he gave away the prize money to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is the successor to William Faulkner's generosity. It is an award designed to be independent of the demands of the publishing industry, free from all constraints of sales and marketing, free to flow from the judgment of a writer's peers.