Superlative Speeches from the 2009 PEN Literary Awards
The 2009 PEN Literary Awards were given out in front of a standing-room only audience at Elebash Recital Hall tonight. I’ve taken the liberty of summing up the ceremony by handing out my own set of superlatives for the night’s speeches. A full listing of awards and their recipients appears below. Enjoy!
Short but Sweet:
Jeffrey Yang, recipient of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for An Aquarium, on finding out his book had won:
“I did not even win at family bingo, so I’ll have to throw this in their face (I have a big family).”
Best Anecdote:
This accolade goes to Sam Shepard, recipient of The PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for a Master American Playwright. Shepard shared the story of how his 40 plus years as a playwright began:
“It was 1963, ’64. I was a bus boy at Village Gate, a jazz club in the Village…I was working on dialogue on Ave C and 10th Street, and I told a guy I thought was an actor and he turned out to be a waiter,” Shepard said. The waiter told the restaurant owner about the bus boy’s ambitions, and it turns out this owner was putting on plays at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery. Shepard said he asked to see his work, and the rest is history.
“Serendipity landed me in the rise of off off Broadway,” said Shepard. “Little did I know I would spend the rest of my life in this endeavor.”
Most Touching:
Steve Coll, whose The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century won The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction:
“I want to thank my wife, Susan. It was our 25th anniversary two days ago. Thank you for adding to our considerable good fortune.”
Best Rags-to-Literary-Riches Story
In her introduction to Donald Ray Pollack, The PEN/Robert Fellowship for Writers recipient, Janna Levin said that Pollack spent 32 years working at a paper mill before he decided to try his hand at fiction. His debut collection of stories, Knockemstiff, won the award that honors a fiction writer whose debut shows established talent—and carries with it a $35,000 prize.
“It was good timing,” Pollack said: “I’m getting ready to get out of grad school and there are no jobs right now,” he joked, earning a roar of appreciative laughter from the crowd.
The full list of nominees and winners appears below.
2009 AWARD RECIPIENTS
PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction ($25,000)
Cormac McCarthy
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000)
Steve Coll for The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
Finalists: Jeff Madrick for The Case for Big Government
Jane Mayer for The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
The Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation
Michael Henry Heim
PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($10,000)
To Richard Brody for Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean Luc-Godard
Finalists: Jeffery Meyers for Samuel Johnson: The Struggle
Stanley Plumly for Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography
PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers ($35,000)
Donald Ray Pollock for Knockemstiff
Finalists: Rivka Galchen for Atmospheric Disturbances
Aravind Adiga for White Tiger
Laura Pels Foundation Awards for Drama ($7,500)
Master: Sam Shepard
Mid-career: Nilo Cruz
PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry ($5,000)
Jeffrey Yang for An Aquarium
PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000)
Carol Lynch Williams for A Glimpse Is All I Can Stand
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000)
Marilyn Hacker for her translation of King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne
Finalists: Randall Couch for his translation of Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral
Forrest Gander for his translation of Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems by Coral Bracho
PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)
Natasha Wimmer for her translation of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Finalists: Jordan Stump for his translation of The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre
Joel Rotenberg for his translation of The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Hanna Tinti for One Story
Translation Fund Grants ($2,000–$3,000)
Click here for a full list of this year’s recipients.
[...] author Donald Ray Pollock gave thanks for the $35,000 prize he received at the PEN Literary Awards earlier this week. “It was good [...]
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The 2009 PEN Literary Awards were given out in front of a standing-room only audience at Elebash Rec [...]…