Ann Patchett ’85 Receives Series of Major Literary Honors

On May 14, bestselling author and bookseller Ann Patchett ’85 received the 2026 PEN/Audible Literary Service Award. The award cites her “singular humane voice” as a novelist and her dedication to independent bookselling and nurturing a vibrant literary community through Parnassus Books, her bookstore in Nashville.

She will also receive the 2026 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction on August 22 and the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award in September. The Library of Congress Prize “honors an American literary writer whose body of work is distinguished by its mastery of the art, as well as its originality of thought and imagination.” In their announcement of the Ambassador Richard Holbrooke Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation cited Patchett’s body of work as reflective of the Prize’s mission of fostering peace, social justice, and global understanding.

Patchett recently published her tenth novel Whistler (Harper). The deft story about a family’s platonic, later-in-life love was lauded in a recent New York Times review: “Is there a place in serious literature for kind, happy characters and kind, happy stories? This intimate and entertaining novel makes the strong case that there is; as demonstrated across her work, such sturdiness of spirit is part of Patchett’s generous worldview.”