Observer » PEN American Center

PEN American Center Literary Awards Announced

Emily Witt — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:59:46 -0400

Susanna Daniel.

The winners of the 2011 PEN literary awards have been announced. It's an exciting list that passes up some authors who have already taken home loads of prizes this year for some new voices, and a good year all around for women and indie publishers.

The prize for a work of debut fiction will be split between two writers: Susanna Daniel, for Stiltsville (Harper Perennial) and Danielle Evans for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Riverhead).

Other winners are Aleksander Hemon, who won the award for mid-career fiction writers; Robert Parkinson, who won for best work of non-fiction for his book Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (Metropolitan Books) and Mark Slouka, who won the essay award for his book Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations (Graywolf Press). The award for science writing went to Siddhartha Mukherjee for his book about cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies (Scribner), which also won the Pulitzer Prize. Stacy Schiff won the biography award for Cleopatra: A Life (Little, Brown and Company). There's more here.

In Which Margaret Atwood Does Not Receive Her Just Desserts

Molly Fischer — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:52:08 -0400

Last night was the PEN America Gala, where, beneath the Natural History Museum's dangling whale, Margaret Atwood received the organization's Literary Service Award.

Said Atwood as she accepted the honor, "I don't deserve this but if we all got what we deserved we would all be boiling in oil."

John Buffalo Mailer Runs With the Bulls For Wall Street 2

Irina Aleksander — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:19:40 -0400

John Buffalo Mailer, the pouty-lipped 31-year-old son of Norman and Norris Church Mailer, has mainly been a theater actor and playwright. (Hello Herman, which he wrote in college, recently underwent a revival in Los Angeles, with Sawyer Spielberg, son of Steven, playing the lead.) But recently, Mr. Mailer finished filming for Wall Street 2, the sequel to Oliver Stone’s seminal 1987 film. He plays protagonist Shia LeBeouf’s character’s best friend, Robbie.

“He’s a good-hearted day trader and ultimately trying to look out for his buddy and do the right thing,” said Mr. Mailer when the Transom bumped into him at the Pen Edmont holiday benefit, the volunteer organization that works with high-school students in underserved communities to encourage reading and writing, at Half King on Sunday, Dec. 13. Mr. Mailer, whose late father was the president of the PEN American Center between 1984 and 1986, was invited to join the committee by his friend, Edmont co-founder Stephanie LaCava, who works at Vogue.

To prepare for his role, Mr. Mailer underwent voice training for a Long Island accent and shadowed traders at several firms during the summer. “One of the more exciting places was Johns Thomas Financial,” he said. “Tommy Belesis [the CEO], who is also in the movie, is essentially a ringmaster and he fires up his 300 traders like you wouldn’t believe. I was shadowing from 9 in the morning to about 6, and when Tommy finished his morning speech, I was on my feet from then on, so I kind of understood the addiction to the adrenaline. It was amazing. The traders eat their lunch at their desk, take a few smoke breaks and pop an Adderall to keep it going.”

Mr. Mailer, who described himself as coming from a “liberal” perspective, said he was biased against Wall Street before spending time at the firm. “I always thought that you’re not actually making anything. You’re taking money from here and putting it there and taking a cut,” he said. “But there are some traders out there who are doing some very good things with the money that they’re moving around. What I discovered is that actually a lot of medical research is financed because of firms like this and education programs. The world would stop without Wall Street.”

The Mailer name, alas, did not impress his new financial-whiz friends. “I don’t think the Wall Street world is [my father’s] biggest fan base,” Mr. Mailer said.

Meanwhile, his screenplay for Norm’s The Naked and the Dead lies waiting. “I was unbelievably bummed that I couldn’t get that thing made while he was alive,” John Buffalo said. “It’s such a huge-budget film that we need the right packaging. But when the time is right for the next $100 million World War II movie, I think it’s in the running.”