Ken Ludwig Reads At PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction Gala

For more on this story, see The Washington Post's Reliable Source.On Monday, September 26, Ken Ludwig presented an original piece of writing as part of “The Writing on the Wall", the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Gala.Calvin Trillin served as Master of Ceremonies for the evening. Other readers included David Remnick, Natasha Trethewey, Andrew Sullivan, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Al Yong, Karen Russell, Amy Dickinson, James McBride, Kyoko Mori and Roxana Robinson.The gala took place at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre in Washington, D.C.As part of this event, Ken also participated in the Writers in Schools program which included a visit to Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington D.C. earlier in the afternoon. He met with a class of high school juniors to discuss Shakespeare as well as his play Shakespeare in Hollywood.About PEN/FaulknerThe PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction was founded in 1980 by National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle. Her goal was to establish a national prize that would recognize literary fiction of excellence, an award juried by writers for writers, free of commercial concerns. The prize was named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize funds to establish an award for younger writers, and PEN, the international writers’ organization.

The first Award was given in May 1981, at a ceremony held in the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Today, the PEN/Faulkner Award is one of the top three national fiction awards, and the largest annual peer-juried prize in America. As Philip Roth noted when he received the 2007 Award, "PEN/Faulkner has consistently recognized works of quality." The Award frequently recognizes new and emerging writers.In 1983, Dr. O.B. Hardison Jr., then director of Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., offered to house the administration of the PEN/Faulkner Award within the Folger. Shortly after the move to Washington, PEN/Faulkner organized itself as an independent charitable arts foundation and began hosting a series of public fiction readings at the Folger. In 1989 the foundation launched the Writers in Schools program.An essential cultural organization, PEN/Faulkner continues to provide arts enrichment to the Washington metropolitan area. Mary Lee Settle’s mission--to create a community of writers, honor excellence in American fiction, and encourage a love of reading--has found ever-expanding expression in the work and outreach of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.For more information, please visit www.penfaulkner.org