AYAD AKHTAR

From an imprisoned Ukranian journalist to a high school activist in Florida, PEN America paid tribute Monday night to democracy and free expression and warned about the dangers faced in the U.S. and abroad.

Author Zadie Smith is this year’s winner of the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, an honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Stephen Sondheim and Margaret Atwood among others.

Ayad Akhtar's acclaimed novel “Homeland Elegies,” Ben Ehrenreich’s environmental warning “Desert Notebooks” and an illustrated edition of the late William Melvin Kelley’s postmodern narrative “Dunfords Travels Everywheres” are among this year’s winners of American Book Awards for works that highlight the country’s diversity.

One of the country’s most esteemed novelists, Louise Erdrich, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “The Night Watchman.”.

NEW YORK – James McBride's latest novel and nonfiction by poets Claudia Rankine and Natasha Trethewey are among the finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for fiction and nonfiction. The American Library Association announced Tuesday that McBride's “Deacon King Kong" was a fiction nominee, along with Ayad Akhtar's novel “Homeland Elegies” and an acclaimed debut novel, Megha Majumdar's “A Burning.” The nonfiction finalists are Trethewey's “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir," Rankine's “Just Us,” which combines poetry, prose and photography, and Rebecca Giggs' “Fathoms: The World in the Whale." Winners in each category will be receive $5,000, and will be announced Feb. 4, 2021. The awards are supported, in part, by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Meet Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar The playwright has been called "a dazzling new voice in American Theatre," who explores one of the most polarizing issues today: Being Muslim in America. Anthony Mason profiles playwright Ayad Akhtar, author of the current Broadway show, "Disgraced."