Inside the PEN/Faulkner Award ft. Mahreen Sohail and Samantha Hunt

was born in Islamabad, Pakistan. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar, and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, Pushcart Prize XLII, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC.

WINNER OF THE 2026 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION

A scintillating debut story collection examining a fundamental question: What does it mean to be good?

In twelve kaleidoscopic stories, Mahreen Sohail shifts our perspective on this question from moment to moment. Two girls observe a group of child soldiers and one reflects: “My sister and I were only small scale sinners.” A chorus of sixth graders unravels a school year they spend obsessed with their twin classmates. A girl cuts off her beautiful long hair for her boyfriend’s dying mother, but he immediately wishes she hadn’t. Alternate, parallel lives are considered. With startling observations and economy of language, Sohail dives ever deeper into the question, asking how—in the midst of grief or betrayal, against a backdrop of war, or even just workaday suffering—being good matters. Small Scale Sinners announces the arrival of an extraordinary talent.