PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) for writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of physical and biological sciences.^[1] The award includes a cash prize of $10,000.^[2]

The award was founded by scientist and author Dr. Edward O. Wilson, activist and actor Harrison Ford, and the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.^[2] The award was inaugurated in 2011.^[3]

Examples of published works that exemplify the quality of writing the award is designed to acknowledge include Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and James Watson's The Double Helix (1969), which contribute 'to the public’s understanding of scientific principles at work in the world today.'^[2]

The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.^[4]

Award winners

PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award winners and runners-up

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2011	Siddhartha Mukherjee	The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer	Winner	[5][6][7]
	David Abram	Becoming Animal	Runner-up	[5][6]
2012	James Gleick	The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood	Winner	[8][9][7][10]
	Donovan Hohn	Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them	Runner-up	[8][9][11]
2013	Leonard Mlodinow	Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior	Winner	[12][13][7]
	David G. Haskell	The Forest Unseen	Runner-up	[12][13]
2014	Carl Hart	High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society	Winner	[14][15][7]
2015	Joshua Horwitz	War of the Whales: A True Story	Winner	[16][17][7]
2016	Lauren Redniss	Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future	Winner	[18][7]
	Cynthia Barnett	Rain: A Natural and Cultural History	Shortlist	[19]
	Joel K. Bourne Jr.	The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World	Shortlist	[19]
	Tom Clynes	The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting, and How to Make a Star	Shortlist	[19]
	Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe	Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World	Shortlist	[19]
2017	Luke Dittrich	Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets	Winner	[7][20]
	Dan Flores	Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History	Shortlist	[21][20]
	Julian Guthrie	How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight	Shortlist	[21][20]
	Hope Jahren	Lab Girl	Shortlist	[21][20]
	Emily Voigt	The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish	Shortlist	[21][20]
2018	Lindsey Fitzharris	The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine	Winner	[22][23][24][25][7]
	David Baron	American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World	Shortlist	[26]
	David Montgomery	Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life	Shortlist	[26]
	Ron Powers	No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America	Shortlist	[26]
	Robert Sapolsky	Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst	Shortlist	[26]
2019	Ben Goldfarb	Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter	Winner	[27][7]
	Vince Beiser	The World in a Grain	Shortlist	[28]
	Andrea Buchanan	The Beginning of Everything	Shortlist	[28]
	Lauren Slater	Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds	Shortlist	[28]
	Carl Zimmer	She Has Her Mother’s Laugh	Shortlist	[28]
2020	Frans de Waal	Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves	Winner	[29][7]
	Patricia S. Churchland	Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition	Shortlist	[30][31]
	Elizabeth Hennessy	On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galapagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden	Shortlist	[30]
	Dahr Jamail	The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption	Shortlist	[30]
	Nathaniel Rich	Losing Earth: A Recent History	Shortlist	[30]
2021	Jonathan C. Slaght	Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl	Winner	[7][32]
	Jennifer Ackerman	The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think	Shortlist	[33][34]
	Rebecca Giggs	Fathoms: The World in the Whale	Shortlist	[33][34]
	Emily Levesque	The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers	Shortlist	[33][34]
	Sonia Shah	The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move	Shortlist	[33][34]
2022	Catherine Raven	Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship	Winner	[35][36][7]
	Lauren Aguirre	The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind What We Remember — A Medical Mystery	Shortlist	[7][37][36]
	Chanda Prescod-Weinstein	The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred	Shortlist	[7][37][36]
	Lisa Wells	Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World	Shortlist	[7][37][36]
	Carl Zimmer	Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive	Shortlist	[7][37][36]
2023	Florence Williams	Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey	Winner	[38]
	Rachel E. Gross	Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage	Shortlist	[39]
	David George Haskell	Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction	Shortlist	[39]
	Manil Suri	The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math	Shortlist	[39]
2024	Rosanna Xia	California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline	Winner	[40]
	Brad Fox	The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths	Shortlist	[40]
	Ben Goldfarb	Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet	Shortlist	[40]
	Leah Hazard	Womb: The Inside Story of How It All Began	Shortlist	[40]
	Charles Barber	In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took on the US Army	Shortlist	[40]