Hosted by Kal Penn, the 2023 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony returns to New York’s Town Hall to celebrate exceptional voices in literature, from first time authors to living legends. Featuring captivating winner announcements, musical direction by Ulysses Owens, Jr., and dramatic readings from selected works this is an unmissable celebration of this year’s most resonant literature.
This year, Tina Fey will receive the prestigious PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award, and presenters including Jad Abumrad, Mahogany L. Browne, Robert Jones, Jr., Ari Melber, and Molly Ringwald will announce the winners of 11 book awards recognizing the finest fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, translation, and more published in 2022. Join us for an evening of writers celebrating writers, in what has become one of the defining literary events of the year.
Available ticket prices (plus fees):
$15 Students, Teachers, and Librarians | Balcony seating
$30 PEN Members and Friends | Balcony seating
$50 Supporter | Loge seating
$65 Patron | Orchestra seating
The 2023 PEN America Literary Awards program and ceremony recognize the generous signature sponsorship from the JKW Foundation, in memory of Jean Stein and her extraordinary contributions to literature.
HOST
Kal Penn is an actor, writer, producer, and former Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. He is known for his starring roles in Designated Survivor, House, Mira Nair’s The Namesake, the Harold & Kumar franchise, and the Christmas comedy The Santa Clauses for Disney+.
From 2009 to 2011, Kal took a sabbatical from acting to serve in the Obama/Biden administration, where he served as the President’s Liaison to Young Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the Arts community. In these roles, he worked on a range of issues, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Affordable Care Act, Pell Grants, arts and culture programs, the DREAM Act, and rapid response to the BP Oil Spill and earthquake in Haiti.
He was a national co-chair for the Obama/Biden re-election campaign in 2012 and served on the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities, focusing on arts education and cultural diplomacy, including the first-ever US Government arts delegation to Cuba. Penn has taught courses at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Los Angeles. Originally from New Jersey, he received his undergraduate degree in sociology, theater, film, and television at the University of California, Los Angeles, and received a graduate certificate in international security from Stanford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Earlier in the year, Penn wrapped production on the Bloomberg Green climate change docuseries, Getting Warmer, and the Viacom/Paramount+ comedy, Surina & Mel. Following the departure of Trevor Noah from The Daily Show, Kal was named as an upcoming guest host.
His first book You Can’t Be Serious was released on November 2, 2021 from Simon and Schuster/Gallery Books. He also narrates the audiobook.
CAREER ACHIEVEMENT HONOREE
Tina Fey is an award-winning writer, actress, and producer. Fey continues to be celebrated for creating and inhabiting the iconic ‘Liz Lemon’ from “30 Rock,” which Fey also co-wrote and co-executive produced. The series earned 16 Emmys and is the record-holder for the most Emmy nominations in one season for any comedy series receiving a total of 103 Emmy nominations over 7 seasons on NBC. Prior to creating “30 Rock,” Fey completed 9 seasons as a writer and cast member on “Saturday Night Live.” She has continued to co-create and executive produce hit shows such as “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “Great News,” “Mr. Mayor,” and “Girls5eva.” Additional film credits include “Mean Girls,” “Baby Mama,” “Date Night,” “Sisters,” “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” to name a few as well as recently starring as a featured voice in Disney/Pixar’s Oscar winning animated film “Soul.” In addition, Fey had memorable roles in Prime Video’s “Modern Love” and most recently was featured in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” with Martin Shot, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez. In 2011, Fey published her first book, Bossypants, which topped the New York Times best seller list. The book also received a Grammy nomination for “Best Spoken Word Album.” Currently, Fey is developing the big screen, musical adaptation of her cult classic film and Tony nominated Broadway musical version of “Mean Girls: The Musical.” Fey has several projects in development under her production banner Little Stranger.
PRESENTERS
Star of stage, screen and television, Molly Ringwald’s credits include Ryan Murphy’s new series in production now, Feud, and was in Murphy’s Netflix mini-series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a cameo in the FX critically acclaimed series The Bear, the film All These Small Moments which was released in January 2019 by Orion Classics and is on VOD (premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival), an arc on The Netflix series Tales of the City, Netflix’s film series The Kissing Booth, CW’s Riverdale, and the off-Broadway production of Terms of Endearment. Known for the iconic films Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, Ringwald began her film career in Paul Mazursky’s Tempest, also starring in The Pick-Up Artist, For Keeps, Fresh Horses, Betsy’s Wedding, and the foreign films Tous Les Jours Dimanches, Enfants de Salaud, and Goddard’s King Lear. Other theater includes Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, the Broadway production of Cabaret as “Sally Bowles”, the Broadway production of Enchanted April, the London production of When Harry Met Sally, Horton Foote’s Lily Dale off-Broadway, Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom!, Modern Orthodox. An accomplished author and translator her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, The Guardian, and more. Her translation of the French novel Lie with Me (April 2019) and the memoir “Your Name Was Maria Schneider” (2022) are both for Scribner.
Jad Abumrad is a composer, musician, and the host and creator of several podcasts (Radioladb, More Perfect, Dolly Parton’s America, Unerased) that collectively are downloaded over 130 million times a year. He’s been hailed for his unique ability to combine cutting edge sound design, cinematic storytelling, and a personal approach to explaining complex topics, from the stochasticity of tumor cells to the legal foundations of the war on terror. Jad studied creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. He composed much of the music for Radiolab, and in the past has composed music for theater, film, and dance.
Radiolab has received three Peabody Awards, the highest honor in broadcasting. And in 2011 Jad received the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Geena Rocero is an award-winning producer, director, model, public speaker, trans rights advocate, and television host, and was named one of Gold House’s 2020 #A100 most impactful Asians and Pacific Islanders. Her directorial debut Caretakers (PBS), a docuseries about Filipinos in care work, received four Emmy nominations. Her upcoming memoir HORSE BARBIE will be released on May 30, 2023 by Penguin Random House imprint, The Dial Press.
Ari Naftali Melber is an American attorney and journalist who is the chief legal correspondent for MSNBC and host of The Beat with Ari Melber.
Rachel Dratch is perhaps best known for her seven seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. She got her start at the Second City theater in Chicago where she was on the main stage for four years, and where she first met Tina Fey! Other tv credits include King of Queens, 30 Rock, Broad City, Shameless, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where she appears as John’s wife Wanda Jo. She has lent her voice to Bob’s Burgers, Harley Quinn and Teen Titans Go! Film: Down with Love, Click, Just Go with It, Sisters, Wine Country, I Love My Dad and the Hallmark movie parody A Clüsterfünke Christmas which she also co-wrote. Theater: Privacy (Public), Ripcord (MTC), Love’s Labour’s Lost (Delacorte), Minsky’s (Ahmanson) and the title role of Sylvia (George Street). Rachel made her Broadway debut over the summer in POTUS, or Behind Every Great Man Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award.