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PEN Oakland Announcs the Winners of its Literary Awards
December 08, 2005
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PEN Oakland Announces the Winners of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles 15th Annual National Literary Awards & 9th Annual PEN Oakland Censorship Award
Well-known and emerging Bay Area and international authors were honored for excellence in multicultural literature at the 15th Annual PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Awards on Friday, December 2nd at the Elihu Harris State Building Auditorium in downtown Oakland.
The program was hosted by authors John Curl and Reginald Lockett with a performance by vocalist Kaylah Marin. The keynote speaker was KPFA General Manager Roy Campanella.. During the program, winners were presented with plaques and asked to read selections from their work.
The award winners were:
Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation (Essays) by Aldon Lynn Nielsen (University of Alabama Press) Judge: Elizabeth Alexander
Eat Everything Before You Die (Novel) by Jeffery Paul Chan (University of Washington Press) Judge: by Alejandro Murguia
The Prodigal (Verse Memoir) by Derek Walcott (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Judge: Quincy Troupe
Beat Thing (Epic Poem) by David Meltzer (La Alameda Press) Judge: Sharon Doubiago
Leaning Against Time (Poems) by Neeli Cherkovski (R.L. Crow Publications) Judge: Phil Cousineau
PsychoRaag (Novel) by Suhayl Saadi ( Black and White Publishing, UK) Judge: Pireeni Sundaralingam
The 9th Annual PEN Oakland Literary Censorship Award honors Kitty Kelley, Author of The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, (Doubleday)
“Kitty Kelley’s book on the Bush crime family led to media cancellations and neglect because the crime family intimidated the media. Her hassles with the Bush crime family are detailed in the introduction to the paperback edition of her book,” states author Ishmael Reed, one of the founders of PEN Oakland.
PEN Oakland, A Bay Area Chapter of the International Organization of Poets, Essayists, and Novelists was founded in 1989 to address multicultural issues, and educate the public as to the nature of multicultural work. These award-winning authors address the diversity and uniqueness of American culture, and represent the new voices of American literature. The late Josephine Miles, in whose honor the awards are presented, was a highly regarded poet, critic, and professor of English at the University of California in Berkeley.
For more information, please call (510) 228-6775.