PEN USA Announces 2006 Literary Award Winners

PEN USA Announces 2006 Literary Award Winners

Pulitzer Prize Winner Jane Smiley to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award and New Line Cinema Co-Chairman Bob Shaye to Receive Award of Honor at Gala Dinner

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- PEN USA, the West Coast center for the renowned writers' organization International PEN, has unveiled the winners of its prestigious 2006 Literary Awards competition. The prizes, announced today by PEN USA Executive Director Adam Somers, honor outstanding work by writers in ten separate categories. They will be presented at the annual Literary Awards Festival Gala Dinner (LitFest), which will be held at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills on December 12, 2006.

In addition to the literary awards, PEN USA's LitFest gala will feature two awards for career achievement. The Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist and journalist Jane Smiley, known for her powerful and compelling works which include A Thousand Acres, a national bestseller that has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award and Horse Heaven, a national bestseller in the United States and short-listed for the Orange Prize in England. Bob Shaye, Co-Chairman and Co- CEO of New Line Cinema, will receive the Award of Honor, given each year to a person or institution whose efforts have significantly affected our culture, in acknowledgment of his founding and running of New Line Cinema as well as his involvement in the funding and distribution of independent films.

Recipients of the literary awards were chosen by a distinguished panel of writers, editors and journalists; winners were selected from among more than 500 entries. Each winner will receive a $1000 cash prize. Past recipients of the Award of Honor and Lifetime Achievement Award include: Jeff Bezos, Octavia E. Butler, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ray Bradbury, Otis Chandler, Betty Friedan, HBO, Walter Mosley, Robert Towne, Carolyn See, Kevin Starr, Gore Vidal, and Billy Wilder.

The evening includes a dinner, the presentation of the competitive literary awards and the honoree awards along with a silent auction of literary memorabilia. A highlight of the evening is the presentation of the prestigious Freedom to Write Awards, The First Amendment Award and the Freedom to Write International Award, given to men and women who have produced work in the face of extreme adversity, who have been punished for exercising their freedom of expression or who have fought against censorship and defended the right to publish freely. The 2006 First Amendment Award will go to Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle, who have been sentenced to eighteen months in jail for refusing to reveal confidential sources on the BALCO baseball doping scandal. This year, PEN USA's Freedom to Write International Award honors the countless Iraqi journalists who can not be recognized for their work due to threats on their lives and livelihoods.

FULL LIST OF 2006 WINNERS:
Fiction PERCIVAL EVERETT -- Wounded (Graywolf Press)
Creative Nonfiction MICHAEL CHOROST -- Rebuilt: How Becoming Part
Computer Made Me More Human (Houghton Mifflin Co.)
Research Nonfiction ADAM HOCHSCHILD -- Bury the Chains: Prophets and
Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
(Houghton Mifflin Co.)
Poetry BRIAN TURNER -- Here, Bullet (Alice James Books)
Children's Literature VIOLA CANALES -- The Tequila Worm (Random House
Children's Books/Wendy Lamb Books)
Translation LUCIA RE and PAUL VANGELISTI -- War Variations by
Amelia Rosselli (Green Integer)
Journalism HEIDI BENSON -- "Historian Iris Chang Won Many
Battles/The War She Lost Raged Within" (San
Francisco Chronicle)
Drama DONALD FREED -- Devil's Advocate (Mercury Theatre)
Teleplay ALEX TSE -- Sucker Free City (Showtime)
Screenplay GEORGE CLOONEY and GRANT HESLOV -- Good Night, And
Good Luck (Section Eight/Warner Independent Films)

ABOUT PEN USA

PEN USA is a non-profit membership organization of writers who work west of the Mississippi. Its members are connected by the goals of building interest in the written word and defending writers worldwide by protecting freedom of expression. Among its many contributions to the literary world, PEN USA's Emerging Voices program awards fellowships to promising writers from underserved communities and provides them with an intensive eight-month program of workshops, classes, seminars and individual mentorships. In the classrooms of many underprivileged schools across Southern California, the PEN in the Classroom program helps children and teachers alike in the process of creative reading and writing.

For further information, visit www.penusa.org

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Source: PEN USA

CONTACT: Press Contact: Ronni Chasen, Jeff Sanderson or Brooke Wilcher,
+1-310-274-4400; or Tickets: Mann Productions, +1-323-314-7000

Web site: http://www.penusa.org/

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