The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living Americans, Green Card holders or permanent residents. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Judges read citations for each of the finalists' works at the presentation ceremony in Washington, D.C. The organization claims it to be "the largest peer-juried award in the country." The award was first given in 1981.
Mary Lee Settle was one of the founders of the PEN/Faulkner Award following the controversy at the 1979 National Book Award, when PEN America voted for a boycott on the grounds that the award had become too commercial.