PEN America to Award White, O'Brien with Lifetime Achievements, Among Others

PEN America will honor author and LGBT cultural pioneer Edmund White with the annual PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. The 2018 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature will go to Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, whose acclaimed work broke down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond. PEN America will also honor poet Kamau Brathwaite with the PEN/ Voelcker Award, translator Barbara Harshav with the PEN/ Manheim Medal for Translation, and author Dave Kindred with the PEN/ ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. The PEN/ Laura Pels Foundation for Theater Awards will be conferred on playwrights Luis Alfaro for Master American Dramatist, Sibyl Kempson for American Dramatist in Mid-Career, and Mike Lew for Emerging American Playwright.

White, O'Brien, and PEN America's other career achievement award winners will accept their prizes at the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, February 20, at the NYU Skirball Center in New York.  A full list of finalists for the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards is available at https://pen.org/2018finalists/.