The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay is awarded by the

PEN America PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922 and headquartered in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of litera ...

(formerly PEN American Center) to an author for a book of original collected essays. The award was founded by PEN Member and author Barbaralee Diamonstein and

Carl Spielvogel Carl Spielvogel (December 27, 1928 – April 21, 2021) was an American marketing executive and diplomat. He co-founded the advertising firm of Backer and Spielvogel (with Bill Backer), where he served as Chairman and CEO. Spielvogel has conduc ...

, former ''New York Times'' columnist, "to preserve the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature." The winner receives a cash award of $10,000. The award was on hiatus from 2005 to 2010.'' Writer's Chronicle'', "PEN Revives Essay Award", February 2011 issue
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The award is one of many PEN awards sponsored by

International PEN PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internationa ...

affiliates in over 145 PEN centres around the world. The PEN American Center awards have been characterized as being among the "major" American literary prizes.

Award winners

*1990

Bernard Knox Bernard MacGregor Walker Knox (November 24, 1914 – July 22, 2010Wolfgang Saxon ''The New York Times'', August 16, 2010.) was an English classicist, author, and critic who became an American citizen. He was the first director of the Center ...

, ''Essays Ancient and Modern'' *1991

Martha Nussbaum Martha Craven Nussbaum (; born May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosoph ...

, ''Love's Knowledge'' *1992 David Morris, ''The Culture of Pain'' *1993

Frederick Crews Frederick Campbell Crews (born 20 February 1933) is an American essayist and literary critic. Professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews is the author of numerous books, including ''The Tragedy of Manners: M ...

, ''The Critics Bear It Away: American Fiction and the Academy'' *1994

Stanley Fish Stanley Eugene Fish (born April 19, 1938) is an American literary theorist, legal scholar, author and public intellectual. He is currently the Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo Scho ...

, ''There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and it's a Good Thing, Too'' *1995 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, ''A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time'' *1996

Thomas Nagel Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...

, ''Other Minds'' *1997

Cynthia Ozick Cynthia Ozick (born April 17, 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Biography Cynthia Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children. She moved to the Bronx with her Belarusian-Jewish parents from Hlusk, ...

, ''Fame and Folly'' *1998

Adam Hochschild Adam Hochschild (; born October 5, 1942) is an American author, journalist, historian and lecturer. His best-known works include ''King Leopold's Ghost'' (1998), '' To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918'' (2011), ''Bur ...

, ''Finding the Trapdoor'' *1999

Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and ...

, ''The Death of Adam'' *2000

Annie Dillard Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 19 ...

, ''For the Time Being'' *2001

David Quammen David Quammen (born February 24, 1948) is an American science, nature, and travel writer and the author of fifteen books. His articles have appeared in '' Outside Magazine'', '' National Geographic'', '' Harper's'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''The New Yo ...

, ''The Boilerplate Rhino'' *2002

David Bromwich David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. Career After graduating from Yale with a B.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. four years later, Bromwich became an instructor at Princeton University, where he was promoted to Mellon Prof ...

, ''Skeptical Music'' *2003

William H. Gass William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...

, ''Test of Time'' *2004 Stewart Justman, ''Seeds of Mortality'' *2011

Mark Slouka Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fi ...

, ''Essays from the Nick of Time'' *2012

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...

, ''

Arguably ''Arguably: Essays'' is a 2011 book by Christopher Hitchens, comprising 107 essays on a variety of political and cultural topics. These essays were previously published in ''The Atlantic'', ''City Journal'', '' Foreign Affairs'', ''The Guardian'' ...

'' *2013

Robert Hass Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection ''Time and Materials: Poems 1997 ...

, ''What Light Can Do'' *2014

James Wolcott James Wolcott (born December 10, 1952) is an American journalist, known for his critique of contemporary media. Wolcott is the cultural critic for '' Vanity Fair'' and contributes to ''The New Yorker''. He had his own blog on ''Vanity Fair'' ma ...

, ''Critical Mass'' *2015

Ian Buruma Ian Buruma (born December 28, 1951) is a Dutch writer and editor who lives and works in the United States. In 2017, he became editor of ''The New York Review of Books'', but left the position in September 2018. Much of his writing has focused on ...

, "Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadow of War" (''New York Review of Books'') *2016

Ta-Nehisi Coates Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates ( ; born September 30, 1975) is an American author and journalist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at ''The Atlantic'', where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, parti ...

, ''

Between the World and Me ''Between the World and Me'' is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It is written as a letter to the author's teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated wi ...

'' *2017 Angela Morales, '' The Girls In My Town: Essays'' *2018

Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...

, ''No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters'' *2019

Michelle Tea Michelle Tea (born Michelle Tomasik, 1971) is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachuset ...

, ''Against Memoir'' *2020 Deborah Fleming, ''Resurrection of the Wild'' *2021

Barbara Ehrenreich Barbara Ehrenreich (, ; ; August 26, 1941 – September 1, 2022) was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and awar ...

, ''Had I Known: Collected Essays'' *2022 Margaret Renkl, ''Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South''

References

External links

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayMBA Essay Writing
{{DEFAULTSORT:PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay PEN America awards Awards established in 1990 1990 establishments in New York City Essay awards