Report from PEN Literary Awards

There was a lot of publishing world compitition for our Meet the Bloggers event last night at Corio, and sadly I couldn’t make it to the PEN awards. Fortunately, Cynthia Shannon, associate publicist from Wiley was on the scene and forwarded me this report:

I went to the PEN Literary Awards last night. They seem to be getting more and more like the Oscars each year (or at least the Golden Globes. Without the designer dresses). Even after the World Voices Festival, which seemed to have just wrapped up, PEN is still bringing attention to the imprisoned writers in China by keeping an empty chair on the stage, and I encourage people to sign the online petition – they want to free 41 writers before the Olympics in 80 days. Amazing how something so simple can be so hard….

Jonathan Ames hosted, and really livened things up by telling an amusing little story about his time fencing at Princeton. Several literary luminaries that were honored were in attendance, including Dalia Sofer (recipient of the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers), Cynthia Ozick (recipient of the Pen/Nabokov Award), and Margaret Jull Costa (PEN/Translation Prize). Ozick gave one of the best acceptance speeches of the night. Seriously, I’m not even a writer and she made me want to write. She spoke about the “ghost of the writer” and whether the person you’re having drinks with is really the writer, or the ghost of the writer, and the real writer sitting at home writing… Should be on the PEN website pretty soon, and I highly recommend looking for it, as well as the Prison Writing, which is another great PEN initiative. Giving voices to those who wouldn’t be heard otherwise. Good stuff.

Photo Credit: Copyright 2008 by PEN American Center/Beowulf Sheehan

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