NEW YORK (AP) — Sarah Jessica Parker will probably be this yr’s recipient of PEN America’s “Literary Service Award.” The “Sex and the City” star, a longtime advocate for studying and literacy, will probably be honored Might 15 on the free expression group’s annual spring gala.
Jon Yaged, CEO of Macmillan Publishers, will obtain the “Business Visionary Award.”
Parker has been concerned in quite a few literary initiatives, whether or not as founding father of her personal publishing imprint or serving as government producer of the anti-book banning documentary “The Librarians,” which premiered final month on the Sundance Movie Competition.
The PEN/Audible Literary Service Award had beforehand been given to an “important writer” who has attracted a large viewers and “helped us understand the human condition,” with earlier winners together with Stephen Sondheim and Toni Morrison. The standards is now “a writer or advocate who has served the literary community through their words or work.”
“We are now at a crisis point with books by underrepresented writers being pulled from school libraries and classrooms,” PEN co-CEO Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf said in a statement released Friday. “Sarah Jessica Parker is pushing back against these bans as an indispensable defender of the freedom to read and by shining a light on exceptional new voices of American contemporary literature through her publishing imprint SJP Lit.”
As head of Macmillan, Yaged publishes authors starting from Sally Rooney and Kristin Hannah to S.A. Cosby and Michael Wolff. The enterprise visionary award is given for “outstanding leadership” that “embraces the power of literature to shape democratic and humane values.”
PEN co-CEO Summer time Lopez praised Yaged for his “eloquence and force” in opposing e-book bans and different restrictions.
“For decades, Jon has been a stalwart defender of the right to read and a champion of ensuring publishing represents diverse voices and perspectives, understanding the fundamental role of these values in a democratic society,” Lopez mentioned in a press release. “We’re honored to provide him the highlight as a ‘visionary’ for his big-hearted, expansive, and principled strategy to literary publishing.”
A former Macmillan CEO, John Sargent, is among the many earlier winners of the enterprise award, together with former publishing executives Markus Dohle of Penguin Random Home, Michael Pietsch of Hachette Guide Group and Caroline Reidy of Simon and Schuster.
