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PEN American Center also offers literary awards for achievement in nonfiction, fiction, poetry, drama, publishing, children's literature, and translation. Click here for more information.
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PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award
PEN American Center and the Katherine Anne Porter Foundation will award a new $10,000 prize for ordinary people who take extraordinary stands to defend the First Amendment in the United States. The PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award, which will honor a United States citizen or resident who has fought courageously to safeguard the First Amendment’s right to freedom of expression as it applies to the written word, will be conferred annually before an audience of America’s most distinguished writers at the PEN Gala in New York. The Katherine Anne Porter Foundation is sponsoring the award, a fitting tribute to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s steadfast support for the freedom to write.

The PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award succeeds the PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award, which concluded a successful 13-year run in 2006. During that time, PEN recognized the efforts of schoolteachers, librarians, booksellers, journalists, school administrators, prison inmates, and government translators who challenged attempts to censor or suppress literature or written materials. More 
PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Awards
The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Awards are a powerful tool in PEN American Center's year-round efforts to end the persecution of individual writers. The awards are designed to honor two writers who have fought courageously in the face of adversity for the right to freedom of expression; however, in 1993, the Freedom to Write Committee broke with the tradition and decided to give three awards to three writers. Established in 1987, and underwritten by PEN member Barbara Goldsmith, the awards have been granted to a total of 37 writers who have either used the money to set up new and innovative projects to further their work against censorship or to writers who have been in dire financial straits as a result of political persecution, often consisting of imprisonment. More 
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