PEN America announced on Tuesday that Toni Morrison had won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. The panel of judges for the $25,000 award was composed of Louise Erdrich, who won the award in 2014; Francine Prose; and Dinaw Mengestu. Ms. Morrison adds the award to her Pulitzer Prize (for “Beloved”, in 1988), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2012),Nobel Prize in Literature (1993) and many other honors.
PEN announced the winners of several other awards on Tuesday. Scott Ellsworth received the $5,000 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing for “The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change and Basketball’s Lost Triumph,”and Nancy Princenthal won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, also worth $5,000, for “Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art.”
The winners will be honored at a ceremony at the New School on April 11. The recipients of five other awards will be announced that night, including the winner of the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.