PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
The PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction is awarded by the PEN American Center "to a distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature."[1] Initially carrying a stipend of US$40,000, the award was created with the cooperation of the Saul Bellow estate and through a grant from Evelyn Stefansson Nef. Announcing the first recipient of the award (Bellow's close friend Philip Roth), PEN president Ron Chernow said the award honors "one of America’s greatest writers...whose work over a forty-year career exemplified the capacity of fiction to encompass the totality of human experience. We are confident that this Award will help to recognize and perpetuate the qualities so evident in Saul Bellow’s writings."[1]
The award was first given in 2007.
The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.[2]
Award winners
- 2007 Philip Roth[3]
- 2009 Cormac McCarthy
- 2010 Don DeLillo[4]
- 2012 E. L. Doctorow[5]
- 2014 Louise Erdrich[6]
- 2016 Toni Morrison[7][8]
Notes
- 1 2 "Philip Roth Wins Inaugural PEN/Saul Bellow Award" (Press release). PEN American Center. April 2, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
- ↑ Alfred Bendixen (2005). "Literary Prizes and Awards". The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 689.
- ↑ "Author Philip Roth wins Saul Bellow Award". USA Today. April 1, 2007. Retrieved August 29, 2012.
- ↑ Alison Flood (27 September 2010). "Don DeLillo wins PEN/Saul Bellow award". The Guardian. Retrieved August 29, 2012.
- ↑ Peter Enzinna (August 30, 2012). "PEN American Center award winners announced". New York Daily News. Retrieved October 24, 2012.
- ↑ Hillel Italie, "Erdrich wins lifetime achievement literary prize". Associated Press, September 9, 2014.
- ↑ Maggie Galehouse (March 1, 2016). "PEN Literary Award winners announced". Chron. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
- ↑ "2016 PEN Literary Award Winners". PEN. March 1, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2016.