Congratulations to authors Janaki Bakhle and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy whose books are among those Longlisted for 2025 PEN America Literary Awards. Bahkle鈥檚 Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva has been nominated for the PEN/Jacqueline Boagrad Weld Award for Biography and Hrdy鈥檚 Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies has been nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
A monumental history of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883鈥�1966), the pivotal figure of Hindu nationalism, Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual biography of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century. Since publishing in February 2024, the book has been hailed as, 鈥淸A] remarkable exercise...a well rounded view of the times in which Savarkar lived, the man he was, the leader he could have been鈥� (The Hindu).
Author Janaki Bakhle is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley and the author previously of Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition.
Father Time is a sweeping account that moves across millennia, and into the present day, explaining that nurture is natural for men and that they are indeed biologically transformed when they care for infants. Since publishing in May 2024, the book has received wide and glowing praise from critics: 鈥淗rdy鈥檚 writing is a joy to read鈥� (Nature); 鈥淸Hrdy] is a rare science writer who combines mastery of her field with warm, readable prose鈥� (Sunday Times); 鈥淭he reading is so nutrient-rich that you will want to pause, digest, reflect, delight, and then urgently read on鈥� (Los Angeles Review of Books). Father Time was named a book of the year by the New Statesman and won the 2024 PROSE Award in Biological Anthropology, Archeology and Ancient History.
Author Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Davis and the author, previously, of The Woman That Never Evolved, Mother Nature, and Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Writing in The Telegraph, Angela Saini noted, 鈥淗rdy is, without exaggeration, one of the most important thinkers in evolutionary biology since Darwin.鈥�
This year marks the first time a PUP book has been nominated in the PEN Awards鈥� biography category and marks the third nomination in the science writing category. Previous nominees from PUP's list include Jhumpa Lahiri鈥檚 Translating Myself and Others, a Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and Peter Singer鈥檚 Ethics in the Real World, Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Both Sean B. Carroll鈥檚 A Series of Fortunate Events and Marcia Bjornerud鈥檚 Timefulness were Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Award.
The PEN America Literary Awards are given annually, across eleven categories. Among the 2025 honorees, twenty-four are books published by university presses, with fifteen university presses represented in total. This year鈥檚 winners will be announced May 8th in New York.