Syrian poet Adonis wins $50,000 lifetime achievement prize

NEW YORK – Syrian poet and translator Adonis has won a $50,000 prize from PEN America for lifetime achievement. The literary and human rights organization also has handed out prizes for best book of 2016 and best debut fiction.

At a Manhattan ceremony on Monday night, with the theme “Books Across Borders,” PEN announced that Adonis was the recipient of the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. Hisham Matar’s memoir about his native Libya, “The Return,” won the $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for the year’s best work. Rion Amilcar Scott’s story collection “Insurrections” won the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. Angela Morales’ “The Girls in My Town,” about growing up Mexican-American in Los Angeles, was given the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.