{"id":40802288331,"date":"2025-04-03T11:10:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/?p=40802288331"},"modified":"2025-04-16T10:42:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T14:42:34","slug":"prof-verchers-novel-nominated-for-pen-faulkner-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/prof-verchers-novel-nominated-for-pen-faulkner-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Vercher’s Novel Nominated for PEN\/Faulkner Award"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Novelist and current artist-in-residence in the Monmouth University English Department, John Vercher, MFA, has been added to the longlist for the PEN\/Faulkner Award<\/a> for his third novel, \u201cDevil is Fine<\/a>\u201d (Celadon Books, 2024). Vercher is one of only 10 authors in the nation being considered for this award<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“I’ve already been stunned by the gracious reception my novel had received,\u201d said Vercher. \u201cTo be nominated alongside this list of authors for an award won by artists whose work I’ve long admired fills me with almost overwhelming gratitude.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PEN\/Faulkner Award for Fiction honors the best published works of fiction by American residents each year and is considered one of the most prestigious honors of the literary world, according to Alena Graedon, MFA, director of the MFA program at Monmouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graedon added, \u201cI’m not at all surprised that John Vercher’s excellent novel \u2018Devil is Fine\u2019 is being recognized in this way, nor that it has received so many other accolades. But I’m very grateful to call him a colleague and thrilled that our students are fortunate enough to benefit from his remarkable expertise.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDevil is Fine\u201d is marketed by Celadon as \u201ca gripping, surreal, and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit\u201d that \u201cdeftly blurs the lines between real and imagined.\u201d It has been called \u201ca powerful exploration of fatherhood and family legacy that never fails to lead with its wit\u201d by The Chicago Review of Books, and the novel was described by Publishers Weekly as a \u201cwrenching\u201d work that \u201creaders won\u2019t be able to look away\u201d from. \u201cDevil is Fine\u201d has also been longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize and included in TIME Magazine\u2019s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prestigious award honors the best published works of fiction by American residents each year. Vercher’s novel is one of only 10 selected from 414 eligible novels and short story collections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":40802288406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[417,322,444],"tags":[5510],"person":[5467,5465],"audience":[14,386,11,8,50,29],"school":[110,26],"program":[],"class_list":["post-40802288331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards-publications-research","category-faculty-accomplishments","category-monmouth-now","tag-mfa","person-alena-graedon","person-john-vercher","audience-alumni","audience-community","audience-current-student","audience-faculty","audience-graduate-student","audience-media","school-english","school-school-of-humanities-and-social-sciences"],"squareimage":{"id":40802288335,"rendered":"\"Artist-in-residence","original":{"url":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2025\/04\/Vercher-square.jpg","width":2532,"height":2532}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802288331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802288331"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802288331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802288417,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802288331\/revisions\/40802288417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40802288406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802288331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802288331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802288331"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=40802288331"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=40802288331"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=40802288331"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=40802288331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}