The Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
The next Hemingway Foundation / PEN and L.L. Winship / PEN New England Awards Ceremony will take place March 30, 2008 at the JFK Library, 3:00 PM. Keynote speaker will be Alice Hoffman.
Last April, Ben Fountain, Brief Encounters With Che Guevara (HarperCollins) was awarded the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction.
The two finalists were Rebecca Johns for Icebergs (Bloomsbury USA) and Yvette Christianse for Unconfessed (Other Press). Two other books received honorable mention: Marisha Pessl for Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Viking) and Janna Levin for A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (Alfred A. Knopf). Judges for the award this year were acclaimed fiction writers Elizabeth Berg, Chang-rae Lee and Sue Miller. Ben Fountain received an $8,000 prize from the Hemingway Foundation and a one week residency in The Distinguished Visiting Writers Series at the University of Idah's MFA Program in Creative Writing. Fountain and competition finalists and runners-up received Ucross Residency Fellowships at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, a retreat for artists and writers.
At the annual ceremony held at the JFK Library, Patrick Hemingway, the son of Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway presented the award and Edward P. Jones, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, served as the ceremony's keynote speaker.
The late Mary Hemingway, a member of PEN, founded the award in 1976 both to honor the memory of her husband, Ernest Hemingway, and to recognize distinguished first books of fiction. The award is funded by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, which has been administered by the Hemingway Society since 1987, and PEN New England. A panel of three distinguished fiction writers selects the winner. PEN New England is one of five regional branches of PEN American Center, which is in turn part of International PEN, the only worldwide organization of writing professionals.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, PEN New England, Cerulli Associates, the Friends of the Hemingway Collection, The Boston Globe Foundation, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/Society, and the Ucross Foundation sponsor the presentation of the awards.