Winners were announced for the $1,000 2024 Athenaeum Literary Award, sponsored by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and honoring "literature of outstanding merit by Philadelphia authors, as well as books whose subject matter focuses on Philadelphia culture or history."
The winners were Philadelphia author Emma Copley Eisenberg for her debut novel, Housemates (Hogarth), and art historian Elizabeth A. Athens for her historical study William Bartram's Visual Wonders: The Drawings of an American Naturalist (University of Pittsburgh Press).
Organizers praised Housemates for its "vivid depictions of West Philadelphia life and timely narrative of love and art," and Visual Wonders for being "a tour de force study of the intersections between observational drawing, knowledge, and the history of science."
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PEN America has announced the finalists in 11 categories for the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards, which confer a total prize purse of nearly $350,000 to writers and translators "chosen for dynamic and thought-provoking works of literary excellence." Winners will be announced on May 8 in New York City. The finalists can be seen here.
PEN America will honor three writers for career achievement: Mozambican author Mia Couto will receive the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature; Lebanese American playwright Mona Mansour will be honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award; and Charles H. Rowell, founder of Callaloo, a journal celebrating writers and visual artists of African descent worldwide, receives the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing.
Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, interim co-CEO of PEN America and chief of literary programming, said: "Extraordinary books change our lives, compelling us to view the world through a new, often stunning lens. As books come under withering censorship across this country, we are excited to celebrate the freedom they represent, along with their power to spark compassion for others and move us to act with our hearts in troubling times. These exceptional writers, the stories they tell and the ideas they probe, build empathy and understanding--sorely needed today--and bring hope that these values will rule our thinking."