The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to honor a "distinguished biography possessing notable literary merit which has been published in the United States during the previous calendar year." [1] The award carries a $5,000 prize.
The award was established by Rodman L. Drake. Previous judges include Brad Gooch, Benjamin Taylor, and Amanda Vaill.
The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes. [2]
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2008 | Janet Malcolm | Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice | Winner | [3] |
2009 | Richard Brody | Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard | Winner | [4] |
Jeffrey Meyers | Samuel Johnson: The Struggle | Runner-up | ||
Stanley Plumly | Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography | Runner-up | ||
2010 | Michael Scammell | Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic | Winner | [5] |
2011 | Stacy Schiff | Cleopatra: A Life | Winner | [6] |
2012 | Robert K. Massie | Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman | Winner | |
Janny Scott | A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother | Runner-up | ||
2013 | Tom Reiss | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | Winner | [7] |
Gordon Bowker | James Joyce: | Runner-up | ||
2014 | Linda Leavell | Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore | Winner | [8] [9] |
2015 | Anna Whitelock | The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court | Winner | [10] [11] |
2016 | Nancy Princenthal | Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art | Winner | [12] [13] |
2017 | Joe Jackson | Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary | Winner | [14] |
2018 | John A. Farrell | Richard Nixon: The Life | Winner | [15] [16] [17] |
2019 | Imani Perry | Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry | Winner | |
2020 | Jacquelyn Dowd Hall | Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America | Winner | |
2021 | Amy Stanley | Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | Winner | [18] |
2022 | Rebecca Donner | All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler: | Winner | [19] |
2023 | Dan Charnas | Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm | Winner | [20] |
2024 | Clare Carlisle | The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life | Winner | [21] |
Michael Scammell is an English author, biographer and translator of Slavic literature.
Robert Kinloch Massie III was an American journalist and historian. He devoted much of his career to studying and writing about the House of Romanov, Russia's imperial family from 1613 to 1917. Massie was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Peter the Great: His Life and World. He also received awards for his book Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (2011).
The PEN Translation Prize is an annual award given by PEN America to outstanding translations into the English language. It has been presented annually by PEN America and the Book of the Month Club since 1963. It was the first award in the United States expressly for literary translators. A 1999 New York Times article called it "the Academy Award of Translation" and that the award is thus usually not given to younger translators.
PEN/Open Book is a program intended to foster racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities, and works to establish access for diverse literary groups to the publishing industry. Created in 1991 by the PEN American Center, the PEN/Open Book program ensures custodians of language and literature are representative of the American people.
Stacy Madeleine Schiff is an American essayist. Her biography of Véra Nabokov won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography. Schiff has also written biographies of French aviator and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, colonial American-era polymath and prime mover of America's founding, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin's fellow Founding Father Samuel Adams, ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the important figures and events of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93 in colonial Massachusetts.
The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation is given by PEN America to honor a poetry translation published in the preceding year. The award should not be confused with the PEN Translation Prize. The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by International PEN in over 145 PEN centers around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes. The award was called one of "the most prominent translation awards."
Adina Hoffman is an American writer whose work blends literary and documentary elements. Her books concern, among other things, the "lives and afterlives of people, movies, buildings, books, and certain city streets."
A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother is a 2011 book by former The New York Times journalist Janny Scott. It is a biography of Ann Dunham, the mother of U.S. President Barack Obama.
The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is awarded by the PEN America to an author for a book of original collected essays. The award was founded by PEN Member and author Barbaralee Diamonstein and Carl Spielvogel, former New York Times columnist, "to preserve the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature." The winner receives a cash award of $10,000.
The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award is awarded by the PEN America for writing that exemplifies literary excellence on the subject of physical and biological sciences. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000.
The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction is awarded by PEN America biennially "to a distinguished book of general nonfiction possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues which have been published in the United States during the previous two calendar years. It is intended that the winning book possess the qualities of intellectual rigor, perspicuity of expression, and stylistic elegance conspicuous in the writings of author and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, whose four dozen books and countless other publications continue to provide an important and incisive commentary on the American social, intellectual and political scene."
The PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry was awarded by PEN America in odd-numbered years in recognition of a book of poetry with "high literary character" by a new and emerging American poet of any age with "the promise of further literary achievement."
The PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship is awarded by the PEN America annually to a writer of children's or young-adult fiction of high literary caliber "at a crucial moment in his or her career to complete a book-length work-in-progress." The author receives $5,000 and was made possible by PEN member Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, the Newbery Medal winner of such books as Sang Spell and Shiloh.
The PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, commonly referred to as the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award, is awarded by the PEN America. It annually recognizes two American playwrights. A medal is given to a designated "grand master" American dramatist, in recognition of their work, and a stipend of $7,500 is presented to a "new voice", an American playwright whose literary and artistic merit is evident in their plays.
The PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing was awarded by the PEN America to honor "a nonfiction book about sports." The award was established in 2010 and is awarded to a title that is "biographical, investigative, historical, or analytical" in nature. Judges have included Robert Lipsyte, Tim O'Brien, and Susan Orlean. In June 2019 ESPN announced it would no longer partner with PEN. The awards have not been rebooted by PEN as of April 2021.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo is a 2012 biography of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas written by Tom Reiss. The book presents the life and career of Dumas as a soldier and officer during the French Revolution, as well as his military service in Italy during the French Revolutionary Wars and later in Egypt under Napoleon. Reiss offers insight into slavery and the life of a man of mixed race during the French Colonial Empire. He also reveals how Dumas's son – author Alexandre Dumas – viewed his father, who served as the inspiration for some of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) and The Three Musketeers (1844).
Awards presented by the PEN American Center that are no longer active.
Ruth Franklin is an American literary critic. She is a former editor at The New Republic and an Adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her first biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016.
Amy Stanley is an American historian of early modern Japan. In 2007, Stanley began teaching in the Department of History at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Japanese history, global history, and women's/gender history. She is best known for her most recent book Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography, and was a finalist for both the Baillie Gifford Prize and Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Rebecca Donner is a Canadian-born writer. She is the author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, which won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, and The Chautauqua Prize She was a 2023 Visiting Scholar at Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of her contribution to historical scholarship. She is currently a 2023-2024 Fellow at Harvard.
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