Claire Jiménez’s “What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez,” a hard-hitting and comic novel set in New York City about a Puerto Rican family’s search for a missing girl, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Alice McDermott’s novel about military wives in Vietnam, “Absolution,” and the Jamel Brinkley story collection “Witness” are among the finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

Oscar-winning composer John Williams has joined a new academy: the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Novels by James McBride and Alice McDermott and a short story collection by Jamel Brinkley are among the 10 books on the longlist for one of the literary world’s top prizes, the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction.