The 1999 Pen Awards were presented on Sunday, April 11, at the culmination of a two-day symposium kicking off the Hemingway Centennial at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Mass., the repository of Ernest Hemingway's papers.
Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer, Kenzaburo , Saul Bellow and Derek Walcott were among the many writers who participated in panels on the late Nobel Prize-winning author's life.
Jack Hemingway, the author's son, presented the 24th annual Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for $7500 for first fiction to Rosina Lippi, for Homestead (Delphinium), to be reissued in paperback by Houghton Mifflin in May. Houghton Mifflin author Donald Hall received the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for Without, a tribute to his late wife, p t Jane Kenyon.
PEN also announced the winners of its 1999 book awards, which will be presented April 27 in New York City. Awards include the PEN essay prize, given to Marilynne Robinson for The Death of Adam (Houghton); the PEN memoir prize, awarded to Ted Solotaroff for Truth Comes in Blows (Norton); and the PEN nonfiction prize, awarded to Philip Gourevitch for We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (FSG). The PEN translation prize was awarded to Michael Hofmann for his translation of The Tale of the 1002nd Night by Joseph Roth (St. Martin's) and to Richard Zenith for his p try translation of Fernando Pessoa &Co. (Grove). PEN's emerging writer awards went to Nick Flynn for p try, Valerie Hobbs for children's books and Kim Todd for nonfiction by a woman writer.
