5 PEN/Faulkner Nominees Named

Five American writers were nominated Wednesday for the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

The nominees are Robert Olen Butler for “A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain” (Henry Holt), Francisco Goldman for “The Long Night of White Chickens” (Atlantic Monthly Press), Maureen Howard for “Natural History” (Norton), E. Annie Proulx for “Postcards” (Scribner’s) and Sylvia Watanabe for “Talking to the Dead” (Doubleday).

With a recent gift to the PEN/Faulkner Foundation by Washington philanthropist Catherine M. Conover, the award becomes the largest annual juried prize for fiction in the United States. Prize amounts have doubled to $15,000 for the winner and $5,000 for each of the other four finalists.

The winner will be announced in late April, and the five writers will be honored at a ceremony on May 15 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.