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Graywolf Press book wins PEN award

Kevin Young's "The Grey Album" wins PEN Open Book Award; former City Pages editor Monika Bauerlein wins for excellence in magazine editing.

By Laurie Hertzel

August 14, 2013 at 3:33PM

(The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Kevin Young. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The PEN awards were announced today, and Graywolf Press finds itself among the many winners. "The Grey Album," by Kevin Young, took one of two $5,000 Open Book Awards, which go to exceptional book-length works of literature by an author of color. (The other award went to Gina Apostol for "Gun Dealer's Daughter.")

You can read the Strib review of "The Grey Album" here.

And Monika Bauerlein, former writer and editor at City Pages in Minneapolis, won the Nora Magid award for excellence along with Clara Jeffery, her co-editor at Mother Jones.

Here's a list of the winners:

PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize ($25,000) to an author whose debut work of fiction suggests distinguished achievement: Sergio De La Pava, for "A Naked Singularity."

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Awzrd for Nonfiction ($10,000): Katherine Boo, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers."

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($10,000): Robert Hass, "What Light Can Do."

PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award ($10,000): Leonard Mlodinow, "Subliminal." PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for an American Playwright in Mid-Career ($7,500): Kirsten Greenidge, and for a Master American Dramatist ($7,500), Larry Kramer. PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000): Frank Deford. PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing: Mark Kram, Jr., "Like Any Normal Day." PEN Open Book Award ($5,000): "Gun Dealers' Daughter," Gina Apostol, and "The Grey Album," Kevin Young. PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography ($5,000) Tom Reiss, "The Black Count."

Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry ($5,000): Rowan Ricardo Phillips PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000) Amy Goldman Koss, "The Intake Office" PEN/Steven Kroll Award for Picture Book Writing ($5,000), Michelle Markel, "The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau" PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000) Molly Weigel, "The Shock of the Lenders and Other Poems," by Jorge Santiago Perednik PEN Translation Prize ($3,000): Donald O. White, "The Island of Second Sight," by Albert Bigoleis Thelen PEN/Nora Magid Award ($2,500), to a magazine editor whose high literary taste has, throughtout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication: Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, co-editors of Mother Jones.