KPBS reporter Jean Guerrero won a national literature award at the 2016 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony held Monday at The New School in New York City.
She’s this year’s recipient of the PEN-Fusion Emerging Writers Prize for “Crux,” a cross-border memoir about her own family. The book has not been published yet.
National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates also received PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
Coates' "Between the World and Me" is an open letter to his son about race and police violence. It's the winner of the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. It won the National Book Award last fall.
Mia Alvar has won a PEN prize for best debut fiction.
Alvar received the $20,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for "In the Country," a story collection about Filipinos in their native country and exiled abroad.
PEN announced two other awards Monday night: Lauren Redness' "Thunder & Lightning" won $10,000 for science writing, and Rick Barot's poetry collection "Chord" won $5,000 for best work by an author of color.
