Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, What Belongs to You, was announced as one of five books selected as finalists for the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the U.S.’s largest peer-juried prize for fiction. Greenwell graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2015 and currently resides in Iowa City.

What Belongs to You received national acclaim and since its publication has been cited by many media outlets as one of the best books of 2016, including NPR, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among others. Aaron Hamburger of the New York Times calls the novel an “instant classic to be savored by all lovers of serious fiction.”

According to the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, this year’s judges considered nearly 500 novels and short story collections by American authors published in the U.S. during the 2016 calendar year.

The winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction will be announced on April 4. All five authors will be honored during the 37th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., on May 6.

For more information, visit penfaulkner.org.