PEN Open Book Award
The PEN Open Book Award is an award intended to foster racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities, and works to establish access for diverse literary groups to the publishing industry. Created in 1991 by the PEN American Center, the award ensures custodians of language and literature are representative of the American people.
The Committee discusses mutual concerns and strategies for advancing writing and professional activities, and coordinates Open Book events. While multiple awards were presented in previous years, the PEN Open Book Award now presents one award every year to books published in the United States by "authors of color who have not received wide media coverage".
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.
Honorees
PEN Open Book Award
After 2010, the Beyond Margins Award was renamed the PEN Open Book Award.Beyond Margins Award
Prior to 2010, the PEN Open Book Award was referred to as the Beyond Margins Award, and several books were selected per year as joint winners.| Year | Author | Title |
| Earlier winners | Yo-Yo Boing! | |
| Earlier winners | Say Goodnight | |
| Earlier winners | The NuyorAsian Anthology | |
| Earlier winners | ||
| 2002 | Illiterate Heart | |
| 2002 | Eye of the Fish | |
| 2002 | A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales | |
| 2002 | Slapboxing with Jesus: Stories | |
| 2002 | Song of the Water Saints | |
| 2004 | West of the Jordan: A Novel | |
| 2004 | The Interpreter | |
| 2004 | The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping | |
| 2004 | Smoking Lovely | |
| 2004 | Knee-Deep in Wonder: A Novel | |
| 2005 | Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun | |
| 2005 | And It Don’t Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years | |
| 2005 | Inheritance | |
| 2005 | Autopsy of an Engine, and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant | |
| 2005 | The Temperature of This Water | |
| 2006 | Directions to the Beach of the Dead | |
| 2006 | Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora | |
| 2006 | Real Karaoke People | |
| 2006 | Dancing in the Dark | |
| 2006 | The Man with My Face | |
| 2007 | Half of a Yellow Sun | |
| 2007 | Blood Beats, Vol. 1 | |
| 2007 | Recyclopedia | |
| 2007 | Theater of Night | |
| 2008 | Song for Night | |
| 2008 | Tales of the Out and the Gone | |
| 2008 | Transparency | |
| 2008 | The Perfect Man | |
| 2008 | The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn | |
| 2009 | Say You're One of Them | |
| 2009 | Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems | |
| 2009 | Changing | |
| 2010 | Flood Song | |
| 2010 | Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original | |
| 2010 | Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History |