Justin Cronin and Elizabeth McCracken Win Literary Awards

Justin Cronin has been awarded the 2002 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his story collection, Mary and O’Neil (Dial). The award is presented annually to a first work of fiction, and includes a prize of $7,500.

In addition, Elizabeth McCracken has won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for her novel Niagara Falls All Over Again (Dial), which was a Book Sense 76 pick for September/October 2001. The award is presented annually to honor the best book by a New England author or with a New England topic or setting. It includes a prize of $3,000.

The PEN Hemingway Award was established in 1976 by the late Mary Hemingway, who was a member of PEN, to honor the memory of her husband, Ernest Hemingway, and to recognize distinguished first books of fiction. The award is funded by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, which has been administered by the Hemingway Society since 1987. The winner is selected by a panel of three PEN judges. Previous winners of the PEN/Hemingway include Marilynne Robinson, Josephine Humphreys, Louis Begley, and Ha Jin. The judges for this year’s award were Andrea Barrett, Charles Baxter, and Bret Lott, and the award was scheduled to be presented by Patrick Hemingway, the son of Ernest Hemingway, at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston.

The L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award in now a joint endeavor of PEN New England and the Boston Globe; it is named after longtime Globe editor Laurence L. Winship. Previous winners include Andre Dubus, Tracy Kidder, Jill Ker Conway, and Anita Shreve