Kate Christensen is the winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for her novel The Great Man (Doubleday). From the Washington Post (”Behind Every Great Man . . . ” by Bob Thompson):
“I’m really shocked,” she said in a telephone interview. To her, an award like the PEN/Faulkner “always seemed unattainable.” Among other reasons, in the 28 years it has existed, only four other women have won.
“It’s me and John Updike and Philip Roth. I was like, do women actually win this thing?” Christensen joked.
From Donna Seaman’s Booklist review:
Christensen’s arch and gratifying novel (think Margaret Drabble) pairs the ridiculous with the sublime, and reminds us that nothing human is simply black or white.
The runners-up:
Annie Dillard, The Maytrees (HarperCollins)
David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk (Bloomsbury)
T. M. McNally, The Gateway: Stories (Southern Methodist)
Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories (Picador)
