Author expected to miss ceremony

NEW YORK — Thomas Pynchon is receiving a $100,000 US prize this spring from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but that doesn’t mean he’ll turn up to accept it.

The academy will make 80-year-old Pynchon the first winner of the Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award, a lifetime achievement honour.

Academy executive director Cody Upton said the media-shy author, best known for novels such as Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, was aware of the prize. But he isn’t expected to attend the May 23 ceremony in New York, when the academy will hand out more than a dozen other awards.

Marlon James, Rick Moody and Mary Gaitskill are among eight writers receiving $10,000 prizes for “exceptional accomplishment in literature.” Atticus Lish will be presented a $20,000 award for a writer “whose work merits recognition for the quality of its prose style.”

Honorees also include Bill Porter, winner of the $20,000 Thornton Wilder Prize for translation; British author Jon McGregor, whose winning of the E.M. Forster Award in Literature will provide him a $20,000 grant to spend time in the United States; History of Wolves author Emily Fridlund, who will be given a $5,000 award for best debut fiction; and Noy Holland, recipient of the $20,000 Katherine Anne Porter Award for “achievements and dedication to the literary profession.”