Alumni Among Recipients of PEN Center USA Literary Awards

Kao Kalia Yang '05 and Martin Pousson '99 were finalists of the PEN Center USA 2017 Literary Awards. 

Pousson won in the fiction category for his book, Black Sheep Boy, a novel in stories that centers around Boo, an outcast boy from the Louisiana bayou who encounters gender outlaws, drag queen renegades and a rogues gallery of sex-starved priests, perverted teachers and murderous bar owners. Myths, fairy tales and Cajun legends all converge in this novel that has been praised by Aimee Bender, Lamda Literary and the Los Angeles Times.

“Beautifully impressionistic, and also raw, open, and vulnerable. Pousson’s bayou is such a frightening and vibrant place, generous and punishing, and the narrator’s perspective pulls us in, and brings the reader close," wrote Bender.

It is also a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship winner, Book Riot Must-Read Indie Press Book, Los Angeles Times Literary Pick, NPR: The Reading Life Featured Book, and Best Gay Fiction Selection.

Yang was a finalist in the creative nonfiction category with The Song Poet, a memoir about her father, a Hmong song poet who resettled in Minnesota after being driven from the mountains of Laos by America's Secret War. It was also the winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

PEN Center USA Literary Awards winners each receive a $1,000 cash prize, a free year of membership with PEN Center USA and an invitation to the Annual Literary Awards Festival in Los Angeles. This year, the winners will be honored alongside Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, The Blind Assassin) who was awarded the 2017 PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award.

The awards will be presented October 27 at a gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and will be hosted by award-winning actor and author Nick Offerman.