Arna Bontemps Hemenway, an assistant professor of English at Baylor University, has won the 2015 PEN/Hemingway Award for a distinguished first book of fiction for his critically acclaimed Elegy on Kinderklavier, published by Sarabande Books.

The late Mary Hemingway, a member of PEN, founded the award in 1976 both to honor the memory of her husband, Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway, and to recognize distinguished first books of fiction. It is considered the largest award for debut fiction in the United States.

As the 2015 winner, Hemenway will receive a $20,000 prize from the Hemingway Family, The Ernest Hemingway Foundation and PEN New England, as well as a residency in The Distinguished Visiting Writers Series at the University of Idaho’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, which comes with a $5,000 honorarium. He’ll also receive a Ucross Residency Fellowship for a full month at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, a retreat for artists and writers.

Past winners of the PEN/Hemingway Award have included Marilynne Robinson, Jhumpa Lahiri, Renata Adler, Joan Silber, Bobbie Ann Mason, Edward P. Jones, Chang-Rae Lee, Ha Jin, Akhil Sharma, Ben Fountain and Teju Cole, among many others. Patrick Hemingway, son of Ernest Hemingway, will present the award to Hemenway on April 19 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Mass.

Also this year, Hemenway’s book Elegy on Kinderklavier was chosen as one of six finalists in the Fiction category of Barnes & Noble’s 2014 Discover Great New Writers Awards.