New York, NY -- February 4, 2014 -- Poets & Writers, Inc. has announced that Ian Frazier, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Joyce Carol Oates will receive the 2014 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Awards, and Kate Medina will receive this year's Editor's Award. The awards will be presented at Poets & Writers' annual benefit dinner, In Celebration of Writers.
The celebration will take place on Tuesday evening, March 11, 2014, at 583 Park Avenue. The chair of this year's event is John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan. Author and humorist Calvin Trillin will serve as the Master of Ceremonies. Susan Isaacs, a novelist and the chair of the Poets & Writers Board of Directors, will present the awards to the honorees on behalf of the Board.
Continuing a Poets & Writers tradition, an author will be seated at each table. Among the more than forty writers participating this year are Elizabeth Alexander, Robert Caro, E. L. Doctorow, Alice McDermott, and Anna Quindlen.
The Writers for Writers Award was established by Poets & Writers in 1996 to recognize authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community. It is named for Barnes & Noble in appreciation of the company's sponsorship of Poets & Writers. Winners are selected by a committee comprised of current and former members of the Poets & Writers Board of Directors.
Author and humorist Ian Frazier will be recognized for his dedication to the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writers' Workshop, which he started in 1994. Haki R. Madhubuti, a Chicago-based poet, publisher, and professor, will be recognized for his efforts to expand opportunities for African American writers. Those efforts include founding Third World Press, leading the establishment of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Center at Chicago State University, and founding an MFA program at Chicago State that is one of the only graduate creative writing programs in the nation at a predominantly African American university, with a curriculum rooted in African American literature. Joyce Carol Oates, the prolific novelist and short story writer, will be recognized for promoting emerging writers through the Ontario Review and Ontario Review Press, which she founded and ran with her late husband Raymond J. Smith, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, for which she served as a founding editor.
The 2014 Editor's Award will go to Kate Medina, executive vice president, associate publisher, and executive editorial director of Random House. Ms. Medina has worked with dozens of acclaimed authors, including Anna Quindlen (a 2006 Writers for Writers Award recipient), who will introduce Medina at the event. The Editor's Award has been given each year since 2009 to a book editor who has made an outstanding contribution to the publication of poetry or literary prose over a sustained period of time. Ms. Medina joins a prestigious list of past honorees that includes Chuck Adams, Kathryn Court, Jonathan Galassi, Daniel Halpern, and Patricia Strachan.
Tickets to the dinner begin at $500 per person. The evening is expected to generate over $500,000, with proceeds to support Poets & Writers' programs for creative writers. More information and honorees' biographies can be found here.
About Poets & Writers
Poets & Writers believes in contemporary literature's indispensable value to our national culture. We focus on literature's source: creative writers.
Our mission is to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.
Founded in 1970, we pursue our mission by publishing Poets & Writers Magazine, an award-winning bi-monthly journal; producing a website that provides trustworthy advice, information, and a lively online community for writers; administering the Readings/Workshops Program, which pays writers fees for giving readings and leading workshops throughout New York and California, as well as in eight cities outside these states; and sponsoring awards for writers including the $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, and the Amy Award. Learn more at pw.org.