PEN Literary Awards 2016 winners announced

In the US, the winners of the 2016 PEN Literary awards have been announced, reports Publishers Weekly. Among the winners announced at the annual awards ceremony in New York are Mia Alvar’s short story collection In the Country (Oneworld), which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction; Ta Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (Text), which won the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; Rick Barot, who won the PEN Open Book Award for an ‘exceptional book-length’ work by an author of colour for his poetry collection Chords (Sarabande); and Jean Guerrero’s ‘Crux’, awarded the PEN/Fusion Prize for an ‘unpublished work of nonfiction that addresses a global and/or multicultural issue’. Eighteen awards, fellowships, grants and prizes totalling US$200,000 (A$260,417) were presented at the awards ceremony, with the awards handed out in the categories of science writing, sports writing, biography, poetry and works in translation among others. Toni Morrison was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and Roxane Gay named the 2016 Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecturer. A full list of the recipients is available here.

Category: International news