PEN American Center, the largest branch of the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization, today announced the winners and runners up of the 2011 PEN Awards, the most comprehensive literary awards program in the country. Next year will mark PEN’s 90th anniversary. For more than 50 of those years, PEN’s Literary Awards program has honored many of the most outstanding voices in literature.

This year, PEN will present 17 awards, fellowships, grants, and prizes—including one that has been revived after a five-year hiatus, the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and three awards offered for the first time ever: the PEN Emerging Writers Awards, the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. With the help of its partners and supporters, PEN will confer nearly $150,000 in 2011 to some of the most gifted writers, editors, and translators working today. Read more

See: PEN.org

Award winners and runners up will be honored at the 2011 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, October 12, 2011, at CUNY Graduate Center’s Proshansky Auditorium in New York City.