E.L. Doctorow wins the 2006 PEN/Faulkner award

Tue, 02/21/2006 - 8:01pm by sernabad

E. L. Doctorow has just been named the recipient of the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel The March.

In his novel, Doctorow brings to savage life General William Tecumseh Sherman's devastating sweep through Georgia and the Carolinas in toward the end of the Civil War.

The PEN/Faulkner, founded in 1980, is the largest peer-juried prize for fiction writers. It has gone to such esteemed authors as Ann Patchett, Ha Jin, John Updike, and Michael Cunningham.

Finalists for the 2006 award are:

Karen Fisher for A Sudden Country
William Henry Lewis for I Got Somebody in Staunton
James Salter for Last Night
Bruce Wagner for The Chrysanthemum Palace

This is Mr. Doctorow's second PEN/Faulkner award. He won in 1990 for Billy Bathgate.