Join us on March 31st at PEN America’s 62nd annual Literary Awards Ceremony hosted by Murray Hill, the comedian, author, producer, and actor known for HBO’s Somebody Somewhere.
The evening features dynamic presenters including Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James; journalist and author Adam Higginbotham; actress and singer Emmy Rossum; Tony award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang; author and journalist Clara Bingham; music journalist and author Dan Charnas; poet and Cave Canem co-founder Cornelius Eady; and author and civil rights litigator Qian Julie Wang. Performances by Broadway singer Amber Iman and the Grammy-award winning Ulysses Owens Jr. Band drive a show that’s as irrepressibly energetic as the writers and writing we’re honoring. The evening also pays tribute to prize-winning Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat with a live performance from her unreleased novel Dèy by Broadway actress Pascale Armand.
Murray Hill, the self-proclaimed “hardest-working middle-aged man in show business,” is a one-man entertainment machine: comedian, host, actor, writer, producer, and walking time capsule of classic showbiz charm. Television audiences know him as Fred Rococo on HBO’s Peabody-winning Somebody Somewhere. He’s popped up on Life & Beth, Drag Me To Dinner Elsbeth, and King of Drag. On the big screen, he starred in Paul Feig’s Jackpot! with John Cena and Awkwafina, and is in the upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger film Man With The Bag. He’s served as a guest correspondent for ABC News and Hulu’s Pride Across America, reporting live from the nation’s biggest Pride celebrations. His memoir, Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man will be released in October 2026 on Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books.
Our awards are juried by panels of esteemed, award-winning authors, editors, translators, and critics. These individuals are committed to recognizing their contemporaries, from promising debut writers to those who have already had a continuous and lasting impact on the literary landscape. Spanning fiction, poetry, essay, translation, and more, these books are dynamic, diverse, and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence. Celebrate alongside the writers, translators, editors, and publishers who made these remarkable stories come to life while we confer nearly $350,000 in prizes.
