Hundreds gather for PEN America gala, hosted by Awkwafina
PEN America held one of New Yorkโs first major indoor literary gatherings since the pandemic began last year, as hundreds met Tuesday night for the organizationโs annual gala to honor writers, community servants, political dissidents and such prominent public figures as Walt Disney executive chair Robert A.
McBride, Rankine among nominees for Carnegie literary medals
NEW YORK โ James McBride's latest novel and nonfiction by poets Claudia Rankine and Natasha Trethewey are among the finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for fiction and nonfiction. The American Library Association announced Tuesday that McBride's โDeacon King Kong" was a fiction nominee, along with Ayad Akhtar's novel โHomeland Elegiesโ and an acclaimed debut novel, Megha Majumdar's โA Burning.โ The nonfiction finalists are Trethewey's โMemorial Drive: A Daughterโs Memoir," Rankine's โJust Us,โ which combines poetry, prose and photography, and Rebecca Giggs' โFathoms: The World in the Whale." Winners in each category will be receive $5,000, and will be announced Feb. 4, 2021. The awards are supported, in part, by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.