PEN USA Literary Awards (2009-10)

From Pen Center USA accessed 9/20/10

Winner:
Victor Lodato: Mathilda Savitch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Finalists:
Scott Blackwood: We Agreed to Meet Just Here (New Issues Poetry & Prose)
Robert Boswell: The Heydey of Insensitive Bastards (Graywolf Press)
Ryan Boudinot: Misconception (Grove/Atlantic)
Laird Hunt: Ray of the Star (Coffee House Press)

POETRY
Winner:
Amy Catanzano: Multiversal (Fordham University Press)
Finalists:
Dan Beachy-Quick: The Nest, Swift Passerine (Tupelo Press)
Douglas Kearney: The Black Automaton (Fence Books)
Rachel Loden: Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta Press)
Joseph Stroud: Of This World: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press)

CREATIVE NONFICTION
Winner:
Vicki Forman: This Lovely Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Finalists:
Charles Bowden: Some of the Dead are Still Breathing: Living in the
Future (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Stephen Elliott: The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism,
and Murder (Graywolf Press)
Jarvis Jay Masters: That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an
Innocent Man on Death Row (HarperOne)
Gregory Orfalea: Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family,
Place, and Politics (University of Arizona Press)

RESEARCH NONFICTION
Winner:
Minal Hajratwala: Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company)
Finalists:
Dan Baum: Nine Lives: Death and Live in New Orleans (Random House
Publishing Group)
Lesley Hazleton: After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni
Split in Islam (Doubleday Publishing)
Robin Kelley: Thelonious Monk (Free Press/Simon & Schuster)
Carol Sklenicka: Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)

CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Winner:
Paul Fleischman: The Dunderheads (Candlewick Press)
Finalists:
Kate DiCamillo: The Magician's Elephant (Candlewick Press)
Benjamin Alire Saenz: Last Night I Sang to the Monster (Cinco Puntos Press)
Liz Garton Scanlon: All the World (Beach Lane Books)

JOURNALISM
Winner:
Mary Melton: Julius Shulman in 36 Exposures (Los Angeles Magazine)
Finalists:
Megan Feldman: Gimme Shelter (Dallas Observer)
Kristen Hinman: Vanishing Act (River Front Times)
Matthew Segal: Spokes People (Los Angeles Magazine)
Joe Wilkins: Out West: Growing Up Hard (Orion Magazine)

TRANSLATION
Winner:
Fady Joudah: Mahmoud Darwish's If I Were Another (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Finalists:
Sean Cotter: Liliana Ursu's Lightwall (Zephyr Press)
Stephen Kessler: Luis Cernuda's Desolation of the Chimera (White Pine Press)
Donald Revell: Arthur Rimbaud's The Illuminations (Omnidawn Publishing)
Edward Snow: The Poetry of Rilke

2009 AWARD RECIPIENTS
PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction ($25,000)
Cormac McCarthy

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000)
Steve Coll for The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Finalists:
Jeff Madrick for The Case for Big Government
Jane Mayer for The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

The Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation: The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation is given every three years and honors a translator whose career has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of his or her work.
Michael Henry Heim

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($10,000)
To Richard Brody for Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard

Finalists:
Jeffrey Meyers for Samuel Johnson: The Struggle
Stanley Plumly for Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography

PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers ($35,000)
Donald Ray Pollock for Knockemstiff

Finalists:
Rivka Galchen for Atmospheric Disturbances
Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger

Laura Pels Foundation Awards for Drama ($7,500)
Master: Sam Shepard
Mid-career: Nilo Cruz
PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry ($5,000)
Jeffrey Yang for An Aquarium

PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000)
Carol Lynch Williams for A Glimpse Is All I Can Stand

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000)
Marilyn Hacker for her translation of King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne

Finalists:
Randall Couch for his translation of Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral
Forrest Gander for his translation of Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems by Coral Bracho

PEN Translation Prize ($3,000)
Natasha Wimmer for her translation of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Finalists:
Jordan Stump for his translation of The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre
Joel Rotenberg for his translation of The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig

PEN/Nora Magid Award ($2,500)
Hanna Tinti for One Story
New Yorker Critic Wins PEN/Bograd Weld Biography Prize

Richard Brody, a film critic and editor at the New Yorker, was selected for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, a $10,000 prize given to a distinguished biography possessing notable literary merit published in the United States during the previous calendar year.
Brody received the award for his first book, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Metropolitan Books). Billy Collins hosted the ceremony, which was held in Elebash Recital Hall at the Graduate Center, CUNY, on May 19.
The award was established by Rodman L. Drake. This year's judges were Timothy Noah, René Steinke, and Judith Thurman.
The finalists were Jeffrey Meyers, for Samuel Johnson: The Struggle (Basic Books), and Stanley Plumly, for Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (W. W. Norton & Co.).
For more information about the award, visit the PEN website.