Reaping and Writing
By EDWARD WYATT; Compiled by Lawrence Van Gelder
The New York Times
November 10, 2004 Wednesday
Late Edition – Final
Four novelists, two poets and two writers of nonfiction have been
chosen by the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, N.M., to receive $925,000
in literary awards and fellowships for their work. The poet W.S. Merwin
will receive the foundation’s lifetime achievement award, carrying
a $200,000 prize. Three literary awards of $125,000 each will go to
Rikki Ducornet, a novelist in residence at the University of Denver
and author of ”Gazelle,” a novel set in Cairo in the 1950’s (Alfred
A. Knopf, 2003); Peter Reading, a British poet; and Luis Alberto Urrea,
for his nonfiction work, including ”The Devil’s Highway” (Little,
Brown, 2004), an account of a group of Mexican men who died in the
desert while crossing illegally from Mexico into the United States
in 2001. The Lannan Foundation also awarded literary fellowships to
Edwidge Danticat, above, a novelist and author of ”The Dew Breaker”
(Knopf, 2004); Thomas Frank, a social critic and author of ”What’s the
Matter With Kansas?” (Metropolitan, 2004); Mavis Gallant, the Canadian
novelist and short-story writer; Micheline Aharonian Marcom, born in
Saudi Arabia and author of ”The Daydreaming Boy” (Riverhead, 2004),
a novel about a survivor of Turkey’s Armenian massacres; and Rebecca
Seiferle, the author of three books of poetry, including ”Bitters”
(Copper Canyon Press, 2001). EDWARD WYATT
From: Baghdasarian