Some things that caught our attention this week.

• US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera has selected Jenny Xie’s manuscript, Eye Level, as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her book will be published in April 2018 by Graywolf Press. Besides publication, the award brings a cash prize of $5,000 and a six-week all-expenses-paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy.

   

• On Monday, March 27, PEN announced its award winners in a live event that featured ESPN commentator Tony Kornheiser; music by Hamilton Leithauser; Tyrone Mitchell Henderson and Matthew J. Harris performing a scene from Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize­–winning play Topdog/Underdog; and host Aasif Mandvi, former Daily Show correspondent. Among the many awards, poet Adonis won the $50,000 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, and Hisham Matar was awarded the inaugural $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for his memoir The Return.

Photo Credit: PEN