AAAL Names 2021 Literature Award Winners
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the winners of its 2021 awards in literature. The awards will be presented virtually at the Academy’s annual ceremony, to be held at 7:00 p.m. ET on May 19. The literature prizes, totaling $600,000, honor established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. The Academy’s 300 members propose candidates, and a rotating committee of writers selects the winners.
Among the major winners, Salvatore Scibona and Laura van den Berg will receive the Mildred & Harold Strauss Livings, each of which comes with a $200,000 purse given as income over two years. Chang-Rae Lee has received the $25,000 Award of Merit for the Novel, and Garth Greenwell has won the $20,000 Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award. Authors Katori Hall, Saskia Hamilton, Yiyun Li, Layli Long Soldier, Jana Prikryl, Adam Rapp, Kathryn Scanlan, and Benjamin Taylor have received the Arts and Letters Awards in Literature, each of which comes with a $10,000 monetary award.
