|
PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir
|
The PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir is given to an American author for his or her first published memoir, distinguished by qualities of literary and stylistic excellence.
The prize is the second award made possible by a bequest from the late
PEN member and mystery writer Martha Albrand, who wished to call
attention to first works in various genres, and complements the
PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.
2006 judges: Annabel Davis Goff, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Dani Shapiro
The 2006 PEN Literary Awards will presented in New York on the evening of Monday, May 22, at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center.
For more information contact Nick Burd: (212) 334-1660, ext. 108, nick@pen.org
Please click here for more information on the award.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
2006 Awardee
|
This year’s award goes to Gregory Rabassa for his memoir If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents (New Directions).
In their citation, the judges write: “Gregory Rabassa's memoir is a beautifully idiosyncratic collage of recollections about the author's great career as translator of such writers as Julio Cortázar, José Lezama Lima, and Gabriel García Márquez. Rabassa's own voice, stripped of the masks of the writers he has so memorably impersonated, shines through with a baroque jumpiness and suppleness of its own. Table talk of the highest order, this book is an opinionated and informative survey of Latin American literature as well as a warmly digressive account of a life immersed in letters; as a biographia literaria, it demonstrates that ‘real life’ takes place inside literature, not merely outside of it.” |
|
|
|
|
|
