PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award celebrates writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the physical or biological sciences and communicates complex scientific concepts to a lay audience. The winner receives a cash award of $10,000.

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 Jim 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), Lewis Thomas’s The Lives of a Cell (1978), and Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979).

All winners, finalists, and longlisters for this award are eligible to receive PEN America’s official emblems. If you are a publisher and interested in obtaining PEN America’s award emblem, please write to [email protected]. For more information, please visit our Awards FAQ page.

2025 Winner

For a work that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of the physical or biological sciences and communicates complex scientific concepts to a lay audience.

Winner: Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, Jason Roberts 

From the judges’ citation: “What does it mean for a thing to be alive? What are its parts, its mechanisms, its situatedness—what shall distinguish one bit of life from another? And above all, how do we—Homo sapiens—fit into the story of life on earth? The biological sciences have their ways of wrestling with these questions now, but so much of it goes back to two European men who hated each other: Linnaeus and Buffon, the founding fathers of taxonomy. Every Living Thing tells the addictive story of two scientists with radically different personalities, biographies, and—no surprise, then—radically different approaches to their work. Their decades-long rivalry formed the bedrock of an entire field. Roberts’ prose is rich in acutely observed historical and cultural detail and paints a vivid picture of biology as it was before Darwin, geese growing on shrubs and all. Most of all, Every Living Thing is a portrait of science as a human activity, driven by ambition and grudge and status like everything humans do, yet still bending towards an ever-greater understanding of the world. This book is about the past, but one can’t read it without asking: what are the decisions scientists and their sponsors are making today that will affect how we understand the world in future centuries?”

History

Eligibility

• Eligible titles must have been published between January 1 and December 31 of the applicable calendar year.
• Eligible books must be written by a single, living author.
• Authors of the work must be permanent U.S. residents or citizens.
• If you submit a book for this award, you may not submit it for any additional PEN America Literary Award, with the exception of the PEN Open Book Award. Please note that the PEN/Faulkner Award is not considered a PEN America Literary Award.

Submission Guidelines

• All submitted books must be published by a trade or academic publisher between January 1 and December 31 in the applicable year. Self-published books are ineligible for the PEN America Literary Awards.
• Books with more than one original author are ineligible for the PEN America Literary Awards.
• PEN America will only accept submissions from publishers or literary agents. Authors may not submit their own books.
• On the submission form, please select the award you are submitting to.
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