2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Shortlist Announced

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award celebrates writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of physical and biological sciences. The winner receives a cash award of $10,000 and will be honored at the PEN Literary Awards.

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award was founded by scientist and author Dr. Edward O. Wilson, activist and actor Harrison Ford, and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. The inaugural award was conferred in 2011.

Examples of published works that exemplify the quality of writing the award is designed to acknowledge include Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring (1962), Dr. James Watson’s The Double Helix (1969), Lewis Thomas’s The Lives of a Cell (1978), and Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979).

Past winners: Siddhartha Mukherjee, James Gleick, Leonard Mlodinow, and Carl Hart

Judges for 2015: Sue Halpern, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Carl Zimmer

Shortlist for 2015:

• War of the Whales: A True Story (Simon & Schuster), Joshua Horwitz

• How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (Riverhead Books), Steven Johnson

• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt and Co.), Elizabeth Kolbert

• The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era (Scribner), Craig Nelson

• Proof: The Science of Booze (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Adam Rogers

Longlist for 2015:

• War of the Whales: A True Story (Simon & Schuster), Joshua Horwitz

• How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (Riverhead Books), Steven Johnson

• 
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery (Little, Brown and Company), Sam Kean

• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt and Co.), Elizabeth Kolbert

• Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery (Dartmouth College Press), Catherine Musemeche MD

• The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era (Scribner), Craig Nelson

• Proof: The Science of Booze (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Adam Rogers

• The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities (Scientific American/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Caleb Scharf

• 
Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution’s Greatest Puzzle (Current), Andreas Wagner

The winners for all the PEN Literary Awards will be announced this summer.

Read more about the longlists for all 2015 PEN Literary Awards

Read about the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award on the website for the PEN American Center

Press Coverage
“PEN Announces Finalists for 2015 Awards.” By John Williams. The New York Times. April 16, 2015.

“Phil Klay and Claudia Rankine Among Finalists for PEN Literary Awards.” By Ron Charles. The Washington Post. April 16, 2015.