2006 Literary Award Winners

The event began with a solomn remembrance of Anna Politkovskya, who was murdered in her native Russia. She was an author, a journalist, and an advocate for human rights. Ms.  Politkovskaya received the PEN USA Freedom to Write Award in 2002 for her work exposing human rights abuses during the war in Chechnya.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Jane Smiley by Henry Bromell for her body of work. The award recognizes 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, received the Award of Honor, given each year to a person or institution whose efforts have significantly affected our culture.  The awards honors his founding and running of New Line Cinema as well as his involvement in the funding and distribution of independent films.

The 2006 First Amendment Award went 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.

The PEN USA Freedom to Write International Award honored Iraqi journalists. Because these journalists can not be individually recognized for their work due to threats on their lives and livelihoods the award was accepted on their behalf by journalist Evan Wright.

PEN USA also honored three high school student writers from the PEN in the Classroom program. These were: Gary Alvarez of John Marshall High School, Lidia Mezhiburskaya of Fairfax High School, and Chuqing Yao of John Marshall High School.

The ten competitive literary awards were presented throughout the evening.

Press Contact: Ronni Chasen/Jeff Sanderson/Brooke Wilcher 310-274-4400

2006 Awards Winners

Fiction

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Percival Everett

Wounded

(Graywolf)

The judges say: Percival Everett’s novel, Wounded is a brilliant re-imagining of the Western and a sophisticated examination of race and sexuality, done with exemplary finesse and lack of pretentiousness. Everett’s protagonist is John Hunt, an African American horse trainer in Wyoming who confounds cultural stereotypes, and who speaks with the colorful brevity of Mark Twain’s finest creations. Everett’s beautiful and remarkably economical prose style packs an enormous amount of action and emotional development into a small number of pages. The judges were pleased to extend recognition to an established writer who has accomplished so much in so many interesting directions in his body of work.

FINALISTS:

Daniel Alarcon War by Candlelight (HarperCollins)

Karen Fisher A Sudden Country (Random House)

Luis Rodriguez Music of the Mill (Rayo/HarperCollins)

William Vollman Europe Central (Viking Penguin)

JUDGES:

Sandra Giedeman (Chair), Tom Lutz, Merle Rubin

Creative Nonfiction

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Michael Chorost

Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human

(Houghton Mifflin)

The judges say: Michael Chorost’s compelling story is the connection between human and human and, more marvelous, human and Machine--in his case, the ingenious and flawed technology of a cochlear implant. Chorost, partially deaf from birth, and suddenly deaf on one day in his thirties, has an implant surgically placed in his inner ear. He then examines, in a way that is at once graceful, funny, delicate and expert, the human ear, the nature of sound and our odd kinship with increasingly sophisticated and adaptable machines. Chorost regards himself as part of the cyborg tribe, those who take irony for granted and for whom the machine is “an aspect of our embodiment.” A well told, satisfying story that skillfully weaves human joys and failings with the successes and shortfalls of technology.

FINALISTS:

Kim Heacox The Only Kayak: A Journey into the Heart of Alaska (The Lyons Press)

Andrew Lam Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora (Heyday Books)

Jack Marshall From Baghdad to Brooklyn: Growing Up in a Jewish-Arabic Family in Midcentury America (Coffee House Press)

Rebecca Solnit A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Viking)

JUDGES:

Judy Dugan (Chair), Robert Flynn, Nora Gallagher

Research Nonfiction

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Adam Hochschild

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free and Empire's Slaves

(Houghton Mifflin)

The judges say: It is important to be reminded of a time, some 200 years ago, when a small band of committed citizens successfully banded together to accomplish the seemingly impossible.  Their crusade, as described in Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains, was to end British slavery and slave trafficking, the system that propped up the British Caribbean sugar plantations, the empire’s economic engine.  The movement, Hochschild tells us, was not only the first global human rights struggle, but the first to employ many of the tactics that have become integral to social movements throughout the world: petitions, eyewitness accounts, an early form of direct mail solicitation and product boycott, in this case sugar which was produced under barbarous slave conditions. 

Hochschild’s retelling of British abolitionism, which reads more like a novel than history text, recounts the rich, complex story of a citizen movement that began in 1787 with just a dozen determined men meeting in a London printer’s shop and ended some five decades later with Parliament’s vote to abolish both slavery and its trade. Hochschild recounts this morality tale without preaching it, and his prose, while even-handed and dispassionate, is filled with compassion and understanding.

FINALISTS:

Reza Aslan No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House)

Stephanie Coontz Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage (Viking)

Greg Critser Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Houghton Mifflin)

Jared Diamond Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking)

JUDGES:

Carla Lazzareschi (Chair), Tom Chaffin, Gregory Orfalea

Poetry

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Brian Turner

Here, Bullet

(Alice James Books)

The judges say: With unflinching imagery and unadorned language, Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet provides an ardent, relevant picture of the war in Iraq. This however, is not just poetry of witness. As a poet and soldier, Turner recovers a mind that has “become very clear,” that sees between the “blood moon” over the Tigris River and “clouds made of gunpowder and rain,” that also, in poem after poem, finds the center of humanity, whether it’s “the white-ochre saltflats” where women gather salt by hand, or the words of Sgt. Gutierrez as he comforts “an injured man who cupped pieces of his friend’s brain.” Brian Turner’s balanced consequence of experience emerges from literal seeing and imaginative seeing.
In a year where these poetry panelists were dazzled by the innovative range of language and subject matter evident in so many of the entries, we ultimately felt that Here, Bulletpresented a necessary imperative force upon the consciousness of its readers. In the translation of mankind’s return to war, truth and inspiration become integral parts of the human spirit. Poet Laureate Donald Hall said a poem is “a human inside talking to a human inside.” So, Turner’s illuminated work reminds us we are not merely distant onlookers. Here, is the destruction of war, our unimaginable loss of life on all sides of the conflict. Here are Turner’s birds that carry all his “bullets into the barrel of the sun,” and the words that carry a soldier home, to the heart of who we are. Here is a talented poet’s window: come close and look.

FINALISTS:

Victoria Chang Circle (South Illinois University Press)

Richard Siken Crush (Yale University Press)

Amber Flora Thomas Eye of Water (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Kerri Webster We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (University of Georgia Press)

JUDGES:

Terry Wolverton (Chair), Elena Karina Byrne, Sholeh Wolpe

Children's Literature

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Viola Canales

The Tequila Worm

(Wendy Lamb Books)

The judges say: A tender, powerful coming-of-age story, steeped in family ties and traditions, of a young Latina woman and her network of comadres.  Beautifully realized characters emerge from the Texas setting, engaging the reader in this warm, funny, and authentic novel.  Canales’s voice is strong and original, constructed through vivid detail and entertaining scenes.  A memorable and accessible first novel for young readers.

FINALISTS:

J.B. Cheaney My Friend the Enemy (Alfred A. Knopf)

Kerry Madden

Gentle's Holler (Viking)

Graham Salisbury Eyes of the Emperor (Wendy Lamb Books)

Gary Soto Help Wanted (Harcourt)

JUDGES:

Susan Patron (Chair), Rudolfo Anaya, Catherine Brady

Translation

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Lucia Re and Paul Vangelisti

War Variations by Amelia Rosselli

(Green Integer)

The judges say: When Adorno, in his Philosophy of New Music, says “The mystery is between these fragments,” he could have been speaking about Amelia Rosselli, the modernist Italian poet born in Paris in 1930, a visionary who wrote in Italian, with French, English, Latin and Provençal “interferences.” Astonishing and engaging, this experimental work startles in its vitality. Translating War Variations is a dazzling enactment. Distinguished translators Lucia Re and Paul Vangelisti transform this tesserae into a straightforward apprehension of itself. 

FINALISTS:

Geoffrey Brock The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco (Harcourt)

Dorna Khazeni H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq (Believer Books/McSweeney's Publishing)

Stanley Lombardo Aeneid by Virgil (Hackett Publishing)

Christopher Middleton Speaking to the Rose: Writings, 1912-1932 by Robert Walser (University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books)

JUDGES:

Robert Alter (Chair), Susann Cokal, Norma Cole

Journalism

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Heidi Benson

"The Life and Death of Iris Chang"

(San Francisco Chronicle)

The judges say: Our criteria for this category put equal weight on reporting and writing. Benson’s piece was clearly exemplary in both. Her use of sensory detail and the breadth of her reporting made for an intimate, elegantly told look into a brilliant but haunted mind. By interviewing everyone from Iris Chang’s parents and husband to old friends and former military officers who were working with her on a new project, the reader gets a sense of Iris Chang’s ferocious intellect and energy, her exhaustion and finally her increasing paranoia and debilitating depression.

FINALISTS:

Pamela Colloff "Unholy Act" (Texas Monthly)

Ben Ehrenreich The Human Fence (The Believer)

Carol Smith The Cipher in Room 214 (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Deanne Stillman The Great Mohave Manhunt (Rolling Stone)

JUDGES:

Lydia Chavez (Chair), Teri Orr, Ray Rivera

Drama

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Donald Freed

Devil's Advocate

(Mercury Theatre)

The judges say: Donald Freed’s Devil’s Advocate draws on an innate musicality in portraying the downfall of the despotic Manuel Antonio Noriega.  The script’s inventive theatricality derives from its duet structure and austere prose which support the harsh eloquence of two very flawed men at the critical moment in their lives.  Set in Panama City in 1989, the infamous general is forced to defend himself from accusations of war crimes to perhaps the world’s toughest judge--a cynical Catholic archbishop whose day job is to distinguish between false and actual miracle claims.  In Freed’s unapologetically political play, Noriega makes no attempt to exonerate himself.  But in making his arguments, he also indicts the U.S. government, his former ally and now over thrower, for its actions there over decades.  As Michael Billington has pointed out in The Guardian, if you see this play through a 2006 lens, “it becomes impossible not to draw disturbing parallels between the capture and trial of Noriega in 1989 and that of Sadam Hussein today for crimes originally supported by America.” Donald Freed must be commended for his command of content and form in telling a brutal story with enormous heart. 

FINALISTS:

Mickey Birnbaum Big Death & Little Death (Woolly Mammoth Theatre)

Julie Jensen Dust Eaters (Salt Lake Acting Company)

Victor Lodato 3F, 4F (Magic Theatre)

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JUDGES:

Elaine Barnard (Chair), Judy GeBauer, John Moore

Teleplay

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Alex Tse

Sucker Free City

(Showtime)

The judges say, “A wholly original, restlessly real take on San Francisco gang life - mixing African American, Chinese American and white combatants - Alex Tse’s Sucker Free City has the kind of non-Hollywood take on urban woe that puts it squarely in league with the best, most dense and novelistic stories. Tse’s screenplay is vibrant and original, filled with nuanced characters and grand storytelling ambition. He manages here to announce himself as a rising talent, a writer not interested in artifice but of authentic, street-wise characters and the complicated essence of their lives. Sucker Free City is superb.”

FINALISTS:

Peter Ferland Bereft (Showtime)

Rodrigo Garcia, Jared Rappaport, and Rob Spera Fathers and Sons (Showtime)

Margaret Nagle Warm Springs (The Mark Gordon Company/HBO)

Suzan-Lori Parks, Misan Sagay, and Bobby Smith, Jr. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harpo Films)

JUDGES:

MIchele Samit (Chair), Tim Goodman, Wendie Malik

Screenplay

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George Clooney and Grant Heslov

Good Night and Good Luck

(Section 8/Warner Independent Pictures)

When the panel decided on Good Night, and Good Luck it was a difficult decision to make because we each felt that all the submissions had excellent merit to them; however, the most insightful of the comments made about the script was written by Michael Sragow when he said, “The Hollenbeck suicide lingers in the air not just as a personal tragedy but also as a reflection of the failure of the newsroom esprit that the rest of the movie celebrates. Also, Clooney and Heslov cleverly intersperse a questioning of the import of Murrow’s triumph from the beginning to the end. The result is both rousing and cautionary; a tough trick, but they pull it off.” Michael’s comment captured the feeling the panel as a whole had about the script and as a panel, we would like to commend both George Clooney and Grant Heslov on writing a script that not only cogently presented Murrow in all his heroism, but that in its own way admonished the journalists of the future, which is today, not to abandon their raison d’être.  That is, of enlightening the public to the truth.

FINALISTS:

Jane Anderson The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (ImageMovers/Dreamworks SKG)

Mark Binder The Upside of Anger (Sunlight Productions/New Line Cinema)

Dan Futterman Capote (United Artists)

Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features)

JUDGES:

Mark Axelrod, Clancy Sigal, Michael Sragow