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 award is also supported by James and Cathy Stone. 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).
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets (Random House), Luke Dittrich
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group), Dan Flores
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight (Penguin Press/Penguin Random House), Julian Guthrie
Lab Girl (Alfred A. Knopf/Penguin Random House), Hope Jahren
The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish (Scribner/Simon & Schuster), Emily Voigt
Winner
The 2017 winner will be announced on February 22, 2017.
2017 Judges
This year’s PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award judges are Emily Anthes, Amy Ellis Nutt, Robin Marantz Henig, and Emma Marris.
Past Winners
Lauren Redniss, Siddhartha Mukherjee, James Gleick, Leonard Mlodinow, Dr. Carl Hart, and Joshua Horwitz
The Genius of Birds (Penguin Press: Penguin Random House), Jennifer Ackerman
What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins (Scientific American/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Jonathan Balcombe
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets (Random House), Luke Dittrich
Engineering Eden: The True Story of a Violent Death, a Trial, and the Fight over Controlling Nature (Crown/Penguin Random House), Jordan Fisher Smith
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group), Dan Flores
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight (Penguin Press/Penguin Random House), Julian Guthrie
Lab Girl (Alfred A. Knopf/Penguin Random House), Hope Jahren
The Gene: An Intimate History (Scribner/Simon & Schuster), Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Glass Universe (Viking/Penguin Random House), Dava Sobel
The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish (Scribner/Simon & Schuster), Emily Voigt
