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 for his third novel, “Devil is Fine” (Celadon Books, 2024). Vercher is one of only 10 authors in the nation being considered for this award.
“I’ve already been stunned by the gracious reception my novel had received,” said Vercher. “To 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.”
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.
Graedon added, “I’m not at all surprised that John Vercher’s excellent novel ‘Devil is Fine’ 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.”
“Devil is Fine” is marketed by Celadon as “a gripping, surreal, and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit” that “deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined.” It has been called “a powerful exploration of fatherhood and family legacy that never fails to lead with its wit” by The Chicago Review of Books, and the novel was described by Publishers Weekly as a “wrenching” work that “readers won’t be able to look away” from. “Devil is Fine” has also been longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize and included in TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024.