American Academy of Arts and Letters
Seventeen writers received awards in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Poet Jamaal May of Detroit received the $20,000 Benjamin H. Danks Award, given triennially to an exceptional young writer. Nonfiction writer Elizabeth Kolbert of Williamstown, Massachusetts, received the $25,000 Blake-Dodd Prize, given triennially to a nonfiction writer. Nonfiction writer Robert MacFarlane of Cambridge, England, received the $20,000 E. M. Forster Award, given annually to a young writer from the United Kingdom or Ireland for a stay in the United States; Alison Lurie and Colm Tóibín judged. Nonfiction writer Joan Acocella of New York City received the $20,000 Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award, given annually to a writer whose work merits wider recognition. Fiction writer Dana Spiotta of Syracuse, New York, received the $20,000 John Updike Award, given biennially to a midcareer writer. Poet August Kleinzahler of San Francisco received the $20,000 Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, given triennially to an exceptional poet. Poet Safiya Sinclair of Los Angeles received the $10,000 Addison M. Metcalf Award, given occasionally to a young writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or drama. Karan Mahajan of Austin, Texas, won the $10,000 Rosenthal
Family Foundation Award for his novel The Association of Small Bombs (Viking, 2016). The annual award honors a book published in the previous year. Arts and Letters Awards in Literature were given to poets Kathleen Graber of Richmond and Luís Alberto Urrea of Naperville, Illinois; fiction writers Ayad Akhtar of Washington, D.C., Chris Bachelder of Cincinnati, Paul Beatty of New York
City, and Jennifer Haigh of Boston; and nonfiction writer and translator Richard Sieburth of New York City. They each received $10,000. Lee Clay Johnson of
St. Louis and Charlottesville, Virginia, received the $5,000 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for his novel, Nitro Mountain (Knopf, 2016). The annual award honors a debut book of fiction published in the previous year. Fiction writer Judy Blume of Key West, Florida, received the E. B. White Award, given to a writer for achievement in children’s literature. The annual awards are given by members of the Academy; this year’s selection committee included John Guare, Thomas McGuane, Anne Tyler, Rosanna Warren, and Joy Williams. There is no application process.