PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017

About the Authors

Deesha Philyaw is the author of the short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, and editor. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February 2020 and released in paperback by Picador in 2021. From 2018 to 2021, Emily served as the editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. During her tenure, the magazine saw record-high circulation, published two anthologies, produced the second season of its acclaimed podcast, and won the 2020 American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Blackbird (Tarumoto Prize winner), Esquire, n+1, The Iowa Review, Hobart, and The Gettysburg Review. 

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the book-length poetry collections The Babies (2004), winner of the Saturnalia Book Prize chosen by Jane Miller, and Tsim Tsum (2009), as well as the chapbook Walter B.’s Extraordinary Cousin Arrives for a Visit & Other Tales from Woodland Editions.  Her collection of stories, Wild Milk, was published by Dorothy in 2018.  She has received fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. HAPPILY, her collection of essays on fairytales and motherhood which began as a monthly column in The Paris Review, is forthcoming from Random House.

KELLY LINK is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble, which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, have coedited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

KELLY LINK is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble, which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, have coedited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

KELLY LINK is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble, which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, have coedited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.