CELEBRATING THE WRITTEN WORD: CHICAGO TRIBUNE ANNOUNCES LITERARY HONORS; ARTHUR MILLER TO RECEIVE FIRST EVER CHICAGO TRIBUNE PRIZE FOR LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT
CHICAGO, October 3, 2002 – One of America’s most treasured playwrights, Arthur Miller has been chosen the first recipient of the Chicago Tribune Prize for Literary Achievement in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to the literary world.
The award will be presented to Miller on Sunday, Nov. 3, at Chicago’s Symphony Center. The event will include a discussion by Miller, as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival (www.chfestival.org).
The Tribune also established the Young Adult Book Award, to be handed out annually to a writer whose work has special resonance with young adult readers. The first Young Adult Book Award goes to Richard Peck for “Fair Weather,” a tale of what happens when three farm children visit the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
The award will be presented to Peck on Saturday, Oct. 26, at Walter Payton High School, as part of the programming for the Children’s Humanities Festival.
In addition to these two new awards, Chicago Tribune announced the 2002 winners of the established Heartland Prizes and Nelson Algren Awards.
Heartland Prizes
Alice Sebold was awarded the Heartland fiction prize for “The Lovely Bones”; Studs Terkel was awarded the Heartland non-fiction prize for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith.” Sebold currently is earning raves for her debut novel, narrated from heaven by a murdered 14-year-old girl. Terkel, a Chicago icon, examines death and what may or may not follow it in his latest book. Sebold and Terkel will receive their awards at an event scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 3, as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival.
The Tribune established the Heartland Prizes in 1988 to recognize each year a novel and work of non-fiction that reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America. Past honorees in the fiction category include Jane Smiley, Annie Proulx and Charles Frazier.
Nelson Algren Awards
June Unjoo Yang is the 2002 grand prize winner for “Laundry,” which looks at prejudice in subtle and overt forms and the transformation of one woman’s life.
Runners-up: Karenmary Penn, “Wishes”; Benjamin Percy, “Falling”; and Lysley A. Tenorio, “The View from Culion.”
The Algren Awards are named for famed Chicago author Nelson Algren, whose 1949 novel “The Man With the Golden Arm” received the first ever National Book Award. The awards honor previously unpublished works of short fiction by amateur or professional American writers. The winning entry and those of the runners-up will be printed in the Chicago Tribune Books section on Sunday, Oct. 27 and will be available on bancodeprofissionais.com.
Chicago Tribune Company publishes the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper with daily readership of more than 2 million and nearly 3 million on Sunday. The company also operates related developing media businesses serving Chicagoland. Chicago Tribune is the founding publication of Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB), one of the country’s leading media companies, operating businesses in broadcasting, publishing and on the Internet.
