Applebaum, Boo Among PEN Award Nominees

In a rematch of the National Book Award, Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain have been shortlisted in the nonfiction category for the 2013 PEN Literary Awards. The other nominees are Donovan Hohn’s Moby-Duck and Victoria Sweet’s God’s Hotel. Boo won the 2012 National Book Award over Applebaum, while both Iron Curtain and Behind the Beautiful Forevers were finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prizes. The shortlists and judges were announced Thursday for the other PEN awards. Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home, Sergio de la Pava’s A Naked Singularity, Jac Jemc’s My Only Wife, Lucia Perillo’s Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain, and Claire Vaye Watkins’s Battleborn were nominated for the debut-fiction award. The winners will be announced later this summer.