‘A Naked Singularity,’ From Self-Published to PEN Award

The journalist Katherine Boo, the playwright Larry Kramer and the first-time novelist Sergio De La Pava are among the winners of the 2013 Pen Literary Awards, announced today by the PEN American Center.

Mr. De La Pava received the organization’s most lucrative award, the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, given to a promising debut work of fiction. “A Naked Singularity,” Mr. De La Pava’s nearly 700-page novel about a public defender, has a remarkable history. Originally self-published in 2008, the book slowly generated buzz on blogs before being picked up by the University of Chicago Press, a distinguished publisher not known for its contemporary fiction. Writing for Slate, Paul Ford called it “the sort of book you write if you’re not sure anyone will ever let you write another one.”

Ms. Boo won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” her already decorated book about life in a Mumbai slum.

Two awards honored playwrights at different stages of their careers. The Master American Dramatist award went to Mr. Kramer. The citation said “The Normal Heart,” Mr. Kramer’s play about the AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s, proved theater can “change the world, save lives and move audiences to action.” Kirsten Greenidge, writer of, among other plays, “Milk Like Sugar” and “Luck of the Irish,” won the American Playwright in Mid-Career award.

Mark Kram Jr.’s first book, “Like Any Normal Day,” about a once-promising high school quarterback turned quadriplegic and his relationship with his brother, scored the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, and the sportswriter Frank Deford was recognized for lifetime achievement.

These and other winners will be honored at a ceremony on Oct. 21 at CUNY Graduate Center’s Proshansky Auditorium in New York City.