PEN News: September 24, 2010‏

WHO WE ARE WHAT WE DO HOW TO HELP WORLD VOICES ADVOCACY PRESS UPCOMING EVENTS September 23- October 3: The 76th International PEN Congress takes places place in Tokyo over the next 10 days. >> More October 13: 2010 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony Winners of this year's awards will be honored at Proshansky Auditorium, CUNY Graduate Center. >> More October 19: State of Emergency: Censorship by Bullet in Mexico Join PEN for an evening of solidarity with Mexican journalists. >> More November 8: New Members/ New Books Party Celebrate new PEN Members and honor those who have published books this year. >> More FIND PEN ONLINE · Facebook · Twitter · Blogspot · iTunes · YouTube · Flickr Advocacy News Writers Urge U.N. to Abandon Efforts to Prohibit Defamation of Religions At a panel held in conjunction with the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, writers and free-expression advocates from around the world warned of the potential harm in imposing legal restrictions on expression considered offensive or defamatory to religions. >> More Watch Faith and Free Speech: Defamation of Religions and Freedom of Expression Watch video statements on faith and free speech presented at the U.N. side-session by Wole Soyinka, Ariel Dorfman, Azar Nafisi, and K. Anthony Appiah Writer Liao Yiwu Finally Permitted to Travel Outside China The Chinese government lifted its travel ban against renowned writer and Independent Chinese PEN Center Board Member Liao Yiwu, who is traveling in Germany to appear in several literary festivals in the coming weeks. >> More New at PEN Announcing the 2010 PEN Literary Awards Winners PEN awarded 14 prizes to writers at work in a variety of genres. From fiction and drama to translation, biography, and poetry, the works of this year's award recipients often find man in a world of madness and violence, seeking salvation across physical, spiritual, and linguistic borders. Read excerpts from the Literary Awards Feature See the complete list of this year's winners PEN Welcomes New Director of World Voices Festival PEN is pleased to welcome László Jakab Orsós as the new Director of the World Voices Festival and Public Programs. Orsós, an accomplished journalist and screenwriter, comes to PEN from the Hungarian Cultural Center, where he served as its Director. >> More PEN at the Brooklyn Book Festival As part of this year's Brooklyn Book Festival, PEN hosted a special bookend quiz event, an anniversary reading, and an authors' lounge at the PEN booth featuring a series of author interviews throughout the day. >> More PEN Freedom to Write: 50th Anniversary Reading RingShout: Eisa Ulen, Bridgett Davis, Martha Southgate, and Chris Jackson in Conversation

Announcing the Recipients of the 2010 PEN Literary Awards‏

WHO WE ARE WHAT WE DO HOW TO HELP WORLD VOICES ADVOCACY PRESS PEN Announces the Recipients of the 2010 PEN Literary Awards PEN American Center, the largest branch of the world's oldest literary and human rights organization, announced today the winners of the 2010 PEN Literary Awards. Each year, with the help of its partners and supporters, PEN confers over $100,000 to writers, editors, and translators. Two new prizes are included in this year's awards: The PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature and The PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. The winners and runners-up will be honored on Wednesday, October 13, at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. The ceremony will begin at 6:30 p.m. and will be followed by a reception. PEN/SAUL BELLOW AWARD FOR ACHIEVEMENT IN AMERICAN FICTION ($25,000) Winner: Don DeLillo PEN/ROBERT BINGHAM FELLOWSHIP FOR WRITERS ($35,000) Winner: Paul Harding for Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press) Runners-up: Terrence Holt for In the Valley of the Kings (W. W. Norton & Company) Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa for Daughters of the Stone (Thomas Dunne Books) PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD ($5,000) Winner: Michael Scammell for Koestler (Random House) Runners-up: Jonathan Bate for Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare (Random House) Graham Farmelo for The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (Basic Books) PEN/W.G. SEBALD AWARD FOR A FICTION WRITER IN MID-CAREER ($10,000) Winner: Susan Choi PEN/LAURA PELS FOUNDATION AWARD FOR A MASTER AMERICAN DRAMATIST (Prize consists of a gift from Bauman Rare Books) Winner: David Mamet PEN/ LAURA PELS FOUNDATION AWARD FOR AN AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT IN MID-CAREER ($7,500) Winner: Theresa Rebeck PEN/ESPN AWARD FOR LITERARY SPORTS WRITING ($5,000) Winner: Marshall Jon Fisher for A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played (Crown) Runners-up: Wil Haygood for Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson (Knopf) Richard Hoffer for Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics (Free Press) Warren St. John for Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town (Spiegel & Gray) PEN/PHYLLIS NAYLOR WORKING WRITER FELLOWSHIP ($5,000) Winner: Pat Schmatz PEN/VOELCKER AWARD FOR POETRY ($5,000) Winner: Marilyn Hacker PEN/TUCK AWARD FOR PARAGUAYAN LITERATURE ($3,000) Winner: Esteban Bedoya for El apocalipsis según Benedicto (Arandurã Editorial) PEN AWARD FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION ($3,000) Winner: Anne Carson for her translation from the Greek of An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides (Faber & Faber) Runners-up: Seamus Heaney for his translation from the Scots of The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables by Robert Henryson (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) Rika Lesser for her translation from the Swedish of Mozart's Third Brain by Göran Sonnevi (Yale University Press) PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE ($3,000) Winner: Michael Henry Heim for his translation from the Dutch of Wonder by Hugo Claus (Archipelago Books) Runners-up: Esther Allen for her translation from the Spanish of Rex by Jose Manuel Prieto (Grove Press) David Constantine for his translation from the German of Faust 2 by Goethe (Penguin Classics) PEN OPEN BOOK AWARDS ($1,000) Winners: Sherwin Bitsui for Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press) Robin D.G. Kelley for Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press) Canyon Sam for Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge (University of Washington Press) More information about the PEN Literary Awards can be found at www.pen.org/awards. Or contact: Nick Burd, (212) 334-1660 ext. 108 Elizabeth Weinstein, (212) 334-1660 ext. 120

Tuesday, October 19: State of Emergency: Censorship by Bullet in Mexico

Tuesday, October 19: State of Emergency: Censorship by Bullet in Mexico

WHO WE ARE WHAT WE DO HOW TO HELP WORLD VOICES ADVOCACY PRESS UPCOMING EVENTS October 21: Global Piano and Literary Salon: The Soul of Cuba Explore Cuban culture through music, readings, food, wine, and lively conversation. >> More November 4: Boris Pahor's Necropolis: A Slovenian Story of Culture, Conflict, and Persecution How did Trieste become an epicenter of racist violence a decade before the Nazis came to power? >> More November 8: New Members/ New Books Party PEN welcomes new Members and honors those who have had new books published this year. >> More State of Emergency: Censorship by Bullet in Mexico Tickets: $15/$10 for PEN Members and students with valid ID. Visit smarttix.com or call (212) 868-4444. An Evening in Solidarity with Mexican Journalists When: Tueday, October 19 Where: The Great Hall, Cooper Union, 7 E. 7th Street, New York City What time: 7 p.m. With readings by Paul Auster, Jon Lee Anderson, Don DeLillo, Laura Esquivel, José Luis Martínez, Francine Prose, Jose Zamora, and poets Víctor Manuel Mendiola and Luis Miguel Aguilar Followed by a conversation with Carmen Aristegui (CNN en Español) and Adela Navarro Bello (Tijuana-based magazine Zeta); moderated by Julia Preston (The New York Times) At least eight journalists have been murdered in Mexico in 2010 alone, and many more have been kidnapped, threatened, or disappeared. Still, in towns and cities throughout the country, journalists are daily defying Mexico's "censorship by bullet" to expose critical truths. Renowned Mexican and American journalists and authors come together for an evening of readings and conversation to call attention to the silencing of Mexican journalists trying to investigate drug-related violence in their country, especially on the U.S./Mexico border. Co-presented by PEN American Center, the PEN Club de México, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Co-sponsored by The Cooper Union and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Press Contacts: Isabelle Deconinck: (212) 727-7662 David Haglund: (212) 334-1660, ext. 115