Category / Awards

by Richard Grayson

American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards announced

I always look forward to seeing the annual ad on the New York Times book page announcing the American Academy of Arts and Letters new members and awards recipients. Today’s the day, and although some of the awards are in music, architecture and the visual arts, many are in literature. I’m thrilled to see a passel of my favorite writers on the list:

New Academy Members
Deborah Eisenberg
Mary Gordon
Allan Gurganus
Jim Harrison
Robert Irwin
Harper Lee
Annie Proulx
Steven Stucky
Billie Tsien

Gold Medal for Fiction
John Updike

Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts
Michael R. Bloomberg

Award of Merit Medal for the Short Story
Charles Baxter

Academy Awards in Literature
Joan Acocella
Charles D’Ambrosio
Barbara Ehrenreich
David Markson
Robert Morgan
Joan Silber
William T. Vollmann
Dean Young

Benjamin H. Danks Award in Drama
Adam Rapp

E.M. Forster Award in Literature
Jez Butterworth

Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction
Tony D’Souza, Whiteman

Addison M. Metcalf Award in Literature
Suji Kwock Kim

Rome Fellowships in Literature
Junot Diaz
Sarah Manguso

Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award in Literature
Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document

Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award in Literature
Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

Congratulations, all.

Oh, and if you have never seen the Academy’s gorgeous headquarters, along with its sister institutions, on Audubon Terrace in way upper Manhattan, you owe it to yourself to visit this architectural marvel some summer afternoon.

by Edward Champion

Pulitzer Winners

This year’s Pulitzer winners have been announced. On the literary front, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has won for fiction, Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff’s The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation has won for history, David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole has won for drama, Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard for poetry, Debby Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher for biography, and Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 for general nonfiction.

by Edward Champion

Why The Spoken Word Grammies Are Useless

I could truly care less about Mary J. Blige’s nomination sweep of the Grammies. What does interest me is the Spoken Word aspect. Alas, this year’s Spoken Word set of nominees are about as far as one can get from genuine poets. Bob Newhart? Bill Maher? Sure, these folks are somewhat effective comedians in their own right, but they are hardly poets. Al Franken? Well, if whiny mainstream “comedians” who take no chances and tell liberals what they already want to hear are indicative of “storytelling,” then let the Two Buck Chuck flow.

This leaves us with Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee reading their autobiography and Jimmy Carter, who actually has written some poetry, although his nomination is for Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, about as “poetic” in nature as Franken’s schtick.

Granted, the Grammies, like most awards ceremonies, are pretty pointless. And there’s no reason to expect them to honor the rich and eclectic millieu of audio books. But if the category in question “includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling,” why doesn’t a single nomination feature poetry? If the celebrities are getting greater recognition, why not create a new category dedicated exclusively to literature?

Well, we can’t have that. Billy Collins, Maya Angelou, and Donald Hall aren’t nearly as sexy as Blige strutting her stuff. Gonna breakthrough? Not on your life.