By Jason Boog

From MediaBistro

Today the PEN American Center announced the winners of the 2009 PEN Beyond Margins Award. Honored for writing "outstanding books by writers of color," three authors will receive $1,000 and be featured at a December celebration.

The three recipients are: Uwem Akpan for "Say You're One of Them" and Juan Felipe Herrera for "Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems," and Lily Hoang for "Changing." National Book Critics Circle president Jane Ciabattari will host the 2009 Beyond Margins Celebration at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe on December 2.

Earlier this year, GalleyCat interviewed Herrera about his work. Here's more from the release: "The Beyond Margins Award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. The Open Book Committee works to increase the literature by, for, and about African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, Latin, and Native Americans, and to establish access for these groups to the publishing industry."