Garth Greenwell’s ‘Small Rain’ wins PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction

NEW YORK (AP) — Garth Greenwell’s “Small Rain,” in which a poet falls ill and confronts mortality, the meaning of art and the failures of health care, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction on Monday.

“Garth Greenwell has wrought a narrative of illness and identity in visceral detail, conveyed with a precision of language that steals the breath,” the judges’ citation reads in part.

Greenwell’s award includes a $15,000 cash prize. Finalists, each of whom receive $5,000, include ‘Pemi Aguda for “Ghostroots,” Susan Muaddi Darraj for “Behind You Is the Sea,” Percival Everett for “James” and Danzy Senna for “Colored Television.”

Previous winners include Philip Roth, Ann Patchett and Yiyun Li.

The awards were established in 1981. They are named for the late Nobel laureate William Faulkner.