2004 Literary Awards Winners

Los Angeles (June 29, 2004) — PEN Center USA announces the winners and finalists of its 2004 Literary Awards competition honoring outstanding works published or produced in 2003 by writers who live west of the Mississippi River.

PEN Center USA’s annual awards program, established in 1982, is a unique regional competition that recognizes literary excellence in ten categories, including nonfiction, fiction, poetry and screen and theatrical plays. Distinguished panels of judges comprised of writers, editors and journalists selected this year’s winners and finalists from more than 500 entries; Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor Susan Brenneman served as chair of judges. Each winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize at PEN’s Literary Awards Festival, a gala dinner to be held in Los Angeles at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel on October 20, 2004. In addition, Dramatic Publishing will publish the winning play.

2004 Awards Winners

Fiction

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DIANA ABU-JABER

Crescent: A Novel

(W. W. Norton & Co.)

Set in “Irangeles,” the Persian- and Arab-American community of Los Angeles, Crescent is a multicultural love story featuring 39-year-old Sirine, a chef whose passionate relationship with an Arabic literature professor stirs up memories of her parents and causes her to reflect on her own identity as an Arab American. Diana Abu-Jaber’s writing is “sure, instinctual, compelling, yet still lurching toward curiosity and discovery,” said the judges. “Crescent is a quiet meditation and rendering of place, characterization and plot. She is able to weave these vital ingredients into a beautiful braiding of story.” Abu-Jaber was born in Syracuse, New York, to an American mother and a Jordanian father, and she was raised between New York State and Jordan. She attended SUNY Oswego for her undergraduate degree and SUNY Binghamton for her Ph.D. Her first novel, Arabian Jazz, won the Oregon Book award in 1994, and Crescent won a National Endowment for the Arts award and was named a Notable Book of the Year by the Christian Science Monitor. Abu-Jaber has taught at a number of universities, and her work has appeared in such publications as Ms, Salon, The New York Times and The Nation. In addition, she is frequently featured on NPR. Her food memoir, The Language of Baklava, will be published in 2005 by Pantheon.

FINALISTS:

Kevin Brockmeier The Truth About Celia (Pantheon)

Allison Burnett Christopher: A Tale of Seduction (Broadway Books)

Louise Erdrich The Master Butchers Singing Club (HarperCollins)

Marianne Wiggins Evidence of Things Unseen (Simon & Schuster)

JUDGES:

Brian Bouldrey, Kate Gale, Amelia Maria de la Luz Montes

Creative Nonfiction

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FLOYD SKLOOT

In the Shadow of Memory

(University of Nebraska Press)

In the Shadow of Memory is Floyd Skloot’s journey through a viral infection that attacked his brain and reshaped his entire life. The judges described the memoir as “a fascinating book that took the reader through the horrors and ruminations, the comedy and the darkness, of brain disease.” They added, “his writing is taut, fluid and in itself a pleasure to soak the eyes in . . . a marvelous, marvelous book.” In the Shadow of Memory won an Independent Book Publishers Award for essay/nonfiction and the 2003 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Skloot now lives in Amity, Oregon, with his wife Beverly Hallberg. He writes poetry as well as fiction and essays. His essays have been anthologized in Best American Essays 1993 and 2000, Best American Science Writing 2000 and 2003, The Art of the Essay 1999 and the 2004 Pushcart Prize Anthology. His work has also appeared in most of the leading literary journals in the United States, including Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly and Poetry. University of Nebraska Press will publish his new memoir, A World of Light, in 2005, and Louisiana State University Press will publish his fourth collection of poetry in 2006.

FINALISTS:

Firoozeh Dumas Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (Villard)

Hubert G. Locke Searching for God in Godforsaken Times and Places: Reflections on the Holocaust, Racism, and Death (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.)

Fred Moody Seattle and the Demons of Ambition: A Love Story (St. Martin’s Press)

Robert Stewart Outside Language: Essays (Helicon Nine Editions)

JUDGES:

Marjorie Gellhorn Sa'adah, Jim Paul, Marcos Villatoro

Research Nonfiction

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DAVID GRINSPOON

Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life

(Ecco)

David Grinspoon is an internationally known planetary scientist who is funded by NASA to study the evolution of Earthlike planets elsewhere in the universe. In Lonely Planets, he takes on the ongoing cultural obsession with the search for life on other planets and uses it to explain the galaxy, the earth and what it means to be human. He writes about the complexities of science and astronomy in “energetically friendly prose,” said the judges. “Lonely Planets is an imaginative study of an arcane subject, but it’s also an intellectually refreshing primer in the workings of the solar system and beyond.” Grinspoon is currently principal scientist in the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and adjunct professor of astrophysical and planetary science at the University of Colorado. His first book was Venus Revealed. He has written for numerous publications, including Natural History, Scientific American and The New York Times, and he has been featured on PBS, NPR and the BBC. Multi-talented, Grinspoon is also a musician who has played guitar and sung in “several great bands destined for obscurity,” including the Geeks, years before being a geek became cool. Grinspoon holds degrees in philosophy of science and planetary science from Brown University and a doctorate in planetary sciences from the University of Arizona. He lives in Denver with his wife, the photographer Tory Read, and three highly intelligent cats.

FINALISTS:

Orcutt Frost Bering: The Russian Discovery of America (Yale University Press)

Edward Humes School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School (Harcourt)

ELINOR LANGER A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America (Metropolitan Books)

Paula A. Michaels Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (University of Pittsburgh Press)

JUDGES:

Judith Lewis, Malcolm Margolin, Jennifer Price

Poetry

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GABRIEL SPERA

The Standing Wave

(Perennial)

Gabriel Spera’s first collection of poems, The Standing Wave, moves effortlessly from old questions about the nature of God and the devil to contemporary concerns to personal meditations on time and loss. “The book demanded our attention for the emotional range of the poems and for the maturity of craft exhibited there,” said the judges. “In short, this book is extraordinary.” Not only does Spera ask the big questions, he does so “brilliantly” and exhibits a willingness to provide answers to serious and troubling issues of the day, especially in the unforgettable and essential “The Suicide Bombers” and “In a Field Outside the Town.” The poems are “so packed with metaphor we seem in 2004 almost to have forgotten how to read them,” add the judges. “Reading this book we remember that we love metaphor, love the old ways of speaking, not only in an individual voice but in the collective voice of our conscience.” Individual poems have appeared in several publications, including DoubleTake, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner and Southern Review. Spera earned his B.A. from Cornell University and his M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

FINALISTS:

Michelle boisseau Trembling Air (University of Arkansas Press)

Suji Kwock Kim Notes from the Divided Country (Louisiana State University Press)

Peter Pereira Saying the World (Copper Canyon Press)

Terry Wolverton Embers (Red Hen Press)

JUDGES:

Eloise Klein Healy, William Archila, Hilda Raz

Children's Literature

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LAURA and TOM McNEAL

Zipped

(Alfred A. Knopf)

In Zipped, 15-year-old Mick Nichols is facing some of life’s big challenges: his stepmother’s apparent adultery, a crush on a girl of a different faith and a pathological boss. “How he overcomes these travails makes for a gripping story that reads like a murder mystery,” said the judges. “Never trite or condescending, Zipped conjures characters that are as complex as they are original. Laura and Tom McNeal write with insight, flair and genuine empathy as they seamlessly navigate the bumpy terrain of the teenage psyche.” Laura, a former high school teacher, graduated from Brigham Young University and the Syracuse University fiction-writing program and has contributed to Threepenny Review, The Quarterly and The Georgia Review, among others. Tom earned an MFA in fiction writing from the University of California at Irvine and subsequently held a Stegner fellowship and a Jones Lectureship at Stanford. He wrote the award-winning novel Goodnight Nebraska, and his short stories have been widely published and anthologized. Together, the McNeals have collaborated on three young adult novels set in the fictional town of Jemison, New York, the third of which is forthcoming from Knopf next year. The first novel in the series, Crooked, won the California Book Award for young adult literature and was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. They are also the authors of The Dog Who Lost His Bob, published by Albert Whitman. The McNeals live in northern San Diego County and are the parents of two boys, Sam and Hank.

FINALISTS:

Kate DiCamillo The Tale of Despereaux (Candlewick Press)

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Almost to Freedom (Carolrhoda Books)

Lisa Westberg Peters Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story (Harcourt)

Ginger Wadsworth Words West: Voices of Young Pioneers (Clarion Books)

JUDGES:

Erika Schickel, Elissa Haden Guest, Elizabeth Partridge

Translation

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COLE SWENSEN

Island of the Dead by Jean Frémon

(Green Integer)

“The botanical garden at the heart of Jean Frémon’s Island of the Dead contains exotic plants, animals both caged and uncaged, and people who may pass each other unseen or meet and converse,” note the judges. “The humans in this artificial, artful Eden, having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, speak so engagingly of appearance and reality, language and love, literature and the world, that the novel itself becomes a garden of delights, a cabinet of wonders, an anatomy of the ‘errant spirits and volatile bodies’ that haunt the nameless narrator. Its polymorphous pleasures have been superbly recreated by translator Cole Swensen: It reads as if it had been written in English, even as it brings us a voice unlike anything English has produced.” A San Francisco native, Swensen received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State, a Certificate in Book Arts from Digby-Stuart College in London, and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz. In addition to translating French poetry and prose, she has published nine volumes of poetry, including Try, which won the 1998 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2000 San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, and Goest, out this year from Alice James Books. Her poetry has been chosen for the National Poetry Series, a New American Writing Award and a Pushcart Prize. She is an associate professor in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

FINALISTS:

Anne MilanO Appel Head Above Water by Stefano Bortolussi (City Lights Books)

Philip Boehm Willenbrock by Christoph Hein (Metropolitan Books)

Elizabeth Horan and Doris Meyer This America of Ours: The Letters of Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Campo (University of Texas Press)

Red Pine Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse (Copper Canyon Press)

JUDGES:

Geoff Brock, Mary Crow, Amanda Powell

Journalism

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Kira Salak

"Places of Darkness"

((National Geographic Adventure)

Called “a real life Laura Croft” by The New York Times, Kira Salak has traveled solo to almost every continent, visiting the world’s most remote places. She was the first person to kayak solo 600 miles down West Africa’s Niger River to Timbuktu, and she completed a 700-mile trip across Alaska to the Arctic Ocean in 2003. “Places of Darkness” is a “riveting account” of Salak’s journey into the Congolese jungle to explore the current efforts to save the mountain gorilla from extinction amidst the brutality of warring tribal factions. Salak comes face to face with the majestic gorillas, groups and individuals who are attempting to save them and dangerous soldiers and poachers. “With considerably artistry, Salak sheds light not only on the plight of the gorillas, and the complexities of the surrounding civil strife, but also on larger questions of nature, innocence and the human paradox of what it means to ‘behave like an animal.’” Salak is contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure and she holds a Ph.D. in English literature and creative writing from the University of Missouri in Columbia. She is the author of Four Corners: Into the Heart of New Guinea, One Woman’s Solo Journey, and National Geographic Books will publish her second book, The Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles to Timbuktu, this November.

FINALISTS:

Dave Gardetta "The Rising: How Disney Hall Redeemed Frank Gehry" (Los Angeles)

Edward Humes "The Unwanted" (Los Angeles)

JOHN KOOPMAN "McCoy’s Marines: Darkside Toward Baghdad" (The San Francisco Chronicle)

JILL LEOVY "Mortal Wounds: The Untold Agony of Black on Black Murder" (Los Angeles Times)

JUDGES:

Susan Emerling, Andrew Klavan, Seth Rosenfeld

Drama

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Luis Alfaro

Body of Faith

(Cornerstone Theater)

Body of Faith is a docu-drama featuring gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith. The playwright drew upon the personal experiences of a large cast as a point of departure, making the script “an entirely different approach to play-making” than all the other submissions. The judges praised Body of Faith, calling it “a wholly original act of playwriting” and “a powerful and affecting piece of literary art.” Born and raised in the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles, Luis Alfaro is an award-winning writer and performer who has been working in theater, performance, poetry and journalism since 1987. A multi-disciplined artist, he is also recognized as a director, curator, producer and community activist. His other plays include Straight as a Line, Electricidad and Bitter Homes and Gardens, and his solo works include Cuerpo Politizado (Politicized Body) and down town, which have been performed nationwide. Alfaro is the associate producer of new play development at the Mark Taper Forum Theater in Los Angeles, where he produces the Taper Too, New Work Festival and Next Step seasons. He is also co-director of the Taper’s Latino Theatre Initiative. Among his numerous accolades are a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and two Kennedy Center Fund for New American Play awards.

FINALISTS:

Mark Jackson The Death of Meyerhold (Shotgun Players)

Julie Marie Myatt The Sex Habits of American Women (Magic Theatre)

Erik Patterson Yellow Flesh/Alabaster Rose (Theatre of Note)

Kate Robin Intrigue with Faye (Manhattan Class Company)

JUDGES:

Alison Carey, Mead Hunter, Judy Soo Hoo

Teleplay

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Anne Meredith

Out of the Ashes

(Showtime)

“The subject of Nazi concentration camp survivors has often been attempted but never more tellingly than in this story,” said the judges of Anne Meredith’s adaptation of Dr. Gisella Perl’s memoir I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz. Out of the Ashes dramatizes Perl’s imprisonment and conscription by the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele to the camp hospital where she must use her wits, medicine and strength of will to help her fellow prisoners survive. Once she finds freedom in the United States, she embarks on a painful struggle to redeem herself as a doctor and to come to terms with what she has endured. “Out of the Ashes shines with truth and honesty . . . with characters who are both memorable and finely drawn,” praised the judges. Meredith grew up in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Bard College in upstate New York. She won the Cable Ace award for Losing Chase and received Writers Guild Awards for Out of the Ashes and her adaptation of Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. Her current projects include Janis, a Janis Joplin biopic to star Renée Zellweger, Cavedweller, based on another Allison book, and Delmore Can’t Dance, to be produced by Scott Rudin. She will direct her script Aftershock this fall.

FINALISTS:

Jane Anderson Normal (HBO)

PAUL COOPER The Maldonado Miracle (Showtime)

TREY ELLIS Good Fences (40 Acres and a Mule/Showtime)

Matia Karrell and C.W. Cressler Behind the Red Door (Showtime)

JUDGES:

Sheila Allen, Janis Diamond, Mollie Gregory

Screenplay

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Brian Helgeland

Mystic River

(Warner Bros.)

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Mystic River is the story of three childhood friends who grew up in working-class Boston and are reunited after 25 years by a terrible tragedy. “It is a complicated tale told simply and beautifully,” said the judges. “The book was not an easy book to adapt. Brian Helgeland succeeds in capturing the dark, tangled, intricacies of the book and in realizing the multi-faceted characters. He writes well, with a subtle but sure touch.” Helgeland is the writer and director of the films The Order, A Knight’s Tale and Payback. He won an Academy Award and Writers Guild Award for co-writing L.A. Confidential, and his most recent screenplay was for Man on Fire. Originally from New Bedford, Massachusetts, Helgeland received his film degree from Loyola Marymount. He currently resides in Southern California with his wife and two sons. Mystic River is the second film he has adapted for Clint Eastwood and he hopes there will be a third.

FINALISTS:

BRIAN HOHLFELD Piglet’s Big Movie (Walt Disney)

SHAWN LAWRENCE OTTO House of Sand and Fog (DreamWorks SKG)

GARY ROSS Seabiscuit (Universal)

LOUIS SACHAR Holes (Walt Disney)

JUDGES:

Diana Wagman, Howard A. Rodman, Kenneth Turan