Winners of the PEN Oakland National Literary Award

(Oakland, CA), November 6, 2006——PEN Oakland announces the winners of the 16th Annual PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Awards honoring excellence in multi-cultural literature. In addition to the literary awards, a lifetime achievement award will be given to Joyce Jenkins, publisher of the Bay Area’s Poetry Flash, and a Censorship Award to author and television news journalist Bill Moyers. The awards will be presented at PEN Oakland’s Sunday, December 3, 2006 Literary Awards Ceremony and Reception at the Oakland Public Library’s West Auditorium, 125 14th Street in downtown Oakland, CA. The program, hosted by authors Tennessee Reed and Lucha Corpi, will take place from 2-5 PM, and is free to the public. For more information, please call (510) 228-6775.

 2006 Literary Award Winners

This year’s award winners include four books of poems: Mona Lisa  Saloy’s Red Beans and Ricely Yours which chronicles the author’s life in the 7th Ward in downtown New Orleans, Jennifer Bishop’s Remain, characterized as simultaneously sardonic and lyrical, Richard Silberg’s Deconstruction of the Blues, touted as "exquisitely comic poems about the mystery of self," and This Land is Not My Land, "a tough, soldier's-eye view of American imperialism working its horrors on the poor in Panama," by Beat chronicler and long-time Bay Area poet A.D. Winans.

Dave Hilliard’s Spirit of the Panther, examines the life of the cofounder and leader of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton, while Gerald Haslam balances the comic and poignant against the hard edges of racism and environmental issues in the stories and essays of Haslam’s Valley, about California’s Central Valley. Mike Madison’s book of essays, Blithe Tomato, which offers a pre-table view of the food industry from the viewpoint of a small-scale farmer in the Sacramento Valley, and the new novel Mending Skins, characterized as "acerbic and eloquent" by noted Onondaga writer Eric Gansworth, rounds off this year’s award-winners.

Poet and longtime arts advocate Joyce Jenkins is honored with the group’s first ever Pen Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on behalf of the local and national literary community through her comprehensive and informative journal, Poetry Flash.

PBS television journalist Bill Moyers receives the Censorship Award for his adherence to the principles of journalism in the face of unfounded, and subsequently discredited, attacks on his objectivity on the PBS program NOW with Bill Moyers.

The PEN Oakland Literary Censorship Awards were inaugurated in 1997 to challenge censorship within the literary culture of the United States, including all aspects of the publishing process, as well as considerations of inclusion/exclusion as they pertain to distribution, reviews, library acquisition, and academic conferences.

National in scope, the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Awards represent a new perception of multicultural literature that does not seek validation from the literary establishment, but creates its own standards and models of literature.

PEN Oakland, A Bay Area Chapter of the International Organization of Poets, Essayists, and Novelists was founded in 1989 to address multicultural issues, and educate the public as to the nature of multicultural work. These award-winning authors address the diversity
and uniqueness of American culture, and represent the new voices of American literature. The late Josephine Miles, in whose honor the awards are presented, was a highly regarded poet, critic, and professor of English at the University of California in Berkeley.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Kim McMillon / ((510) 228-6775 / kimmac@pacbell.net / www.penoakland.org

Pen Oakland Announces the Winners of the Pen Oakland-Josephine Miles

16th Annual National Literary Awards / Sunday, December 3rd / FREE TO THE PUBLIC

posted 7 November 2006