Puget Sound Novel Wins Book Award

David Guterson of Bainbridge Island, Wash., has won the PEN-Faulkner Award for Fiction for his first novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

Ursula Hegi, of Nine Mile Falls, Wash., was among the five finalists competing for the $15,000 first prize. She was nominated for her novel, “Stones from the River.”

Hegi, 48, is a professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University. She has been on the EWU faculty for 11 years and has won recognition for her writings.She and the other three nominees will receive $5,000.

The judges considered 300 novels and short-story collections published in the United States.

Inspired by “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Guterson’s novel centers on the trial of a Japanese-American fisherman accused of the murder of a German-American fisherman on a fictional island after World War II.