Across Multiple Genres, Honorees Included Dagoberto Gilb, Kali Nicole Gross, Ana Raquel Minian, Jason Roberts, Amy Stuber, Frank X. Walker, and More, as Well as Career Achievement Award Winners Mia Couto, Mona Mansour, and Charles H. Rowell
See Full List of Winners Here
(NEW YORK)—Last night the 61st annual PEN America Literary Awards celebrated literary excellence, honoring 13 authors and translators for books written in 2024 in a ceremony dubbed “the Oscars for Books,” hosted by two-time Emmy Award-winning television host Tamron Hall. Legendary authors and new voices alike, whose works represent multiple genres and contribute indispensable knowledge and complexity to diverse subjects, gathered for the momentous event at The Town Hall in Manhattan’s fabled theater district.
Awardees addressed crises at home and abroad on issues from immigration and censorship to assaults on free expression, and shared urgent messages of resilience and resistance, exemplifying PEN America’s belief in literature and the freedoms to read and write as bedrocks of free expression and democracy.
Tamron Hall, opening the ceremony, said, “It’s frankly shocking sometimes to see so many leaders advocate to ban certain pieces of literature they don’t agree with. Especially that one piece of literature, the Constitution—you may have heard of it. Many threats to free expression these days come from something deeper than government overreach. They come from people’s growing disconnect from free speech as a personal value, and from perhaps our unwillingness to engage respectfully with those who we might disagree with.” She added: “The fight for free expression never ceases. It is always, as we know, under attack.” Hall’s first children’s book, Harlem Honey, became a New York Times bestseller this March.
Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, co-CEO of PEN America, said the awards “embody the mission that both ignites and unites us at PEN America: our mandate to uplift all writers, across backgrounds, genres, and forms. The writers who experiment boldly, and who speak truth to power. Our nominees this year are all exceptional and absolutely deserving of recognition and celebration for their outstanding work.”
Kali Nicole Gross won the PEN Open Book Award—given to an exceptional book-length work of any literary genre by an author of color—for Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times, which illuminates the stories of women who fought for justice and dignity, from the 19th century “badger thieves” who robbed men on the streets of Philadelphia to victims of intimate partner violence who defended their honor. She said, “Thank you so much for recognizing the work of a writer like me, telling stories about Black women who fussed and cussed, who slept around, got knocked up and took control of their reproductive systems by any means necessary. Yeah, clap for that. And also women who fought and made a way for themselves in a moment where they existed as citizens in name only. I drew a lot of strength from their stories, because if those sisters could find a way through those moments, and their embodied practice managed to create a space and where they actually eked out victories for themselves, then we can get through what we’re going through right now.”
She later told an interviewer: “I’m in awe of the women who found the strength and courage to fight for themselves against tremendous odds… they were really genius in the ways that they wielded their fury.”
Ana Raquel Minian accepted the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States, which tells the tragic and timely story of America’s often brutal treatment of noncitizens, including locking them up without charge. Minian said, “I want to thank all the people I interviewed for this book, people who were held behind bars because they were immigrants. This is a history of immigrant detention that really helps to shed light on the human story of immigrant detention. It is also one that shows that in the past, the government truly supported immigration detention, but then, because of pressures from citizens, it had to turn away from that. We did it in the past, and we can do it again.” Later, she told an interviewer the climate for immigrants in the United States was “dire” but expressed hope that citizens could reverse this situation with determined activism.
PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection-winner Frank X Walker (for Load in Nine Times: Poems), who coined the term Affralachia and whose work has long challenged perceptions of Appalachia as a white literary monoculture, said, “In 1863, 23,703 African American men signed up for the Union army to fight for freedom in Kentucky, a red state, even redder then. Five thousand more self-emancipated, left the state and joined the United States Colored Troops, making Kentucky the largest contributor of African American soldiers to the entire Union effort. But even today, people still think that none of the Bluegrass is Black. So thank you, PEN America, for recognizing that even in a very red state that there are black and brown boys and men reading and writing.”
Accepting the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for A Passing West: Essays from the Borderlands,about the vitality of Mexican American culture to the American southwest, Dagoberto Gilb said, “ My stories are of the American Southwest, which nobody cares about and nobody reads about. And we’re part of the Mexican invasion, even though we’re not really Mexicans, we’re not Americanos, we’re Chicanos, and we’ve been here a while, like 200 years. It’s especially awkward when our President wants us to go back home as quickly as possible. But that said, I wanna say that I am really grateful to Pen America and to the judges who I hope don’t get their asses kicked for picking me.”
Pulitzer Prize winner Jason Roberts was last night honored with the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. He said, “I want to thank the institution that brings us all here today, and the reason why I say that is because on March 27 of this year, somebody in the White House that you may be familiar with released a presidential action, and it was entitled, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. And that person condemned the Smithsonian for their exhibits on display. And specifically the statement said, and I quote, ‘that the Smithsonian should be chastised, censored’ for quote, ‘promoting the view that race is not a biological reality, but a social construct.’ Stating, quote, ‘race is a human invention.’ Well, race is a human invention. Race is a social construct, and that’s what a lot of my book is about. And I read those words in the paper, and realized that the only reason my book hasn’t been banned is because they haven’t gotten around to it. And if that does happen, I know who will have my back, who I will turn to, and that’s PEN America. We are honored that you exist.”
He later told an interviewer: “This is a time in which we need to reclaim reality. … There’s not a matter of both sides in science. Science is not an argument, it’s not a debate, it’s not a discussion.”
Michael Deagler won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel—a prize that has introduced readers to significant new talent including Chang-Rae Lee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Louis Begley. His book Early Sobrieties, which The New York Times called“wise and piercing…witty, weary, unforgettable,” is about the struggles of a recovering alcoholic who returns to live in his boyhood home in suburban Philadelphia post-college in his 20s. He did not attend because he was getting married. His publicist, accepting the award on his behalf, read a statement Deagler prepared, saying, “I would like to thank the judges for what I can only imagine was a terrible amount of work, and to express what an immense honor it is to be included among such a talented group of debut novelists. I can say without a doubt that this award is the second best thing to happen to me today.”
Amy Stuber, who won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection for her debut Sad Grownups, said, “I 100 percent did not expect this, and neither did my mom, as you could hear. I’m not young, I’m 55, this is a debut book. I really did not think I would be up here.”
Keith O’Brian,who won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, for Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, said he was compelled to write the book because “ it was more than just a baseball story. And I’m sort of honored that PEN America felt the same way. I saw this as a Greek tragedy; it just happened to play out in and around an American baseball field and at the end of the day a very human story.”
Three writers were honored with career achievement awards for their significant contributions to literature and culture. They included Lebanese American playwright Mona Mansour (with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, recognizing a mid-career American playwright with an outstanding voice);eminent Mozambican author Mia Couto (with the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, conferred to an author whose work represents the highest level of literary achievement);and Charles H. Rowell, founder of Callaloo, a journal celebrating writers and visual artists of African descent worldwide (with the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing, honoring a magazine editor who has greatly contributed to the excellence of the publication they edit).
Mia Couto, whom the PEN/Nabokov jury cited for probing his homeland’s fraught history “as well as essential riddles of identity and existence,” said in his acceptance speech, “ I’m here because I’m part of a common struggle, the struggle to ensure that writers should be free and without fear to do their work. This battle is happening all the time everywhere. Nations are not big or small. America doesn’t need to become a great nation. America has always been a great nation, and it has been a great nation because artists were fighting against what could have made Americans small. They fought against the genocide of native people against slavery, against racism, and against use of violence inside and outside America. The voice of these artists has been an inspiration throughout the world, including my own country, Mozambique.”
Mona Mansour, who has won critical praise and numerous awards for plays that have aimed to change the narrative around Arabs and Arab Americans, and whom the PEN/Laura Pels jury honored for “deepening the range of stories seen on U.S. stages,” said, “I was an actor and I wasn’t very good, but obviously there’s something about being in this space that speaks to me and makes me feel more alive than anything else. Theater is a heartbreaking career. As many of you know about your own field, it’s been very difficult to be an Arab American in theater for these last couple of years. It’s been very difficult to be a person these last couple years…There’s so much that goes into being an American, into being like a halfy, and things you contend with. But like we’re all saying, we have to keep speaking. We just have to keep speaking.”
PEN America’s Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf acknowledged the cancellation of the ceremony last year after writers withdrew their nominations, saying, “It was a loss we feel deeply. So it means an extraordinary amount to us that several of the 2024 honorees and judges are here with us this evening. Your work, your voices, and your presence are an essential part of this gathering. And we thank you.”
In addition to the literary awards, PEN America honored 12 authors who received the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers for $2,000 each and handed out grants for writing to 16 authors/translators”
The awards were juried by panels of esteemed, award-winning authors, editors, translators, and critics committed to recognizing their contemporaries.
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Press Contacts
Suzanne Trimel at PEN America: 201.247.5057, [email protected]
Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell Associates, [email protected]