SELINSGROVE, ( Pa. ) – The Grace That Keeps This World , a novel by Tom Bailey, associate professor of English and creative writing at Susquehanna University, has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction. The novel, based on a tragic hunting accident in upstate New York where Bailey held his first teaching assignment, was published by Random House's Crown Publishing Group, under the imprint of Shaye Areheart Books, in October.

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction was founded in 1980 by writers to honor their peers and is now the largest juried award for fiction in the United States . It is named in honor of William Faulkner, who used his 1949 Nobel Prize winnings to establish a fund to support and encourage young fiction writers.

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the author of the best American work of fiction that year. The winner receives $15,000 and each of four runners-up receives $5,000. The foundation then brings the winner and runners-up to Washington , D.C. , to read from their work at the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The award was first given in 1981 and is affiliated with International PEN, the world's oldest human rights and international literary organization. PEN was founded in 1921 to promote intellectual cooperation among writers, to emphasize the role literature plays in the development of mutual understanding and world culture, to fight for freedom of expression around the globe, and to work on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and killed for their views. Bailey's novel was also nominated for the National Book Award, won this year by William T. Vollmann for Europe Central . The winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction will be announced in March.

Bailey was on sabbatical leave through the fall semester, touring the country promoting The Grace That Keeps This World and working on his third novel, tentatively called Sunny Hills . His second novel, Cotton Song , will be released by Random House in the fall of 2006. Bailey will return to the classroom in January for the spring semester.