The New York City–based PEN American Center has announced the winners of the 2014 PEN Literary Awards. The annual awards honor emerging and established writers in a range of genres, including poetry, fiction, biography, children’s literature, sports writing, science writing, translation, and drama. This year PEN will award nearly $150,000 in prize money.

“Celebrating the written word is an essential part of defending it,” said PEN President Peter Goodwin, “and it is through PEN’s literary awards that we continue to honor some of the most exceptional books and bodies of work that free expression makes possible.” PEN has awarded its literary awards for over 50 years.

James Wolcott won the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for his essay collection Critical Mass (Doubleday). Geoff Dyer, Stanley Fish, Ariel Levy, and Cheryl Strayed judged. The annual award is given for an essay collection published in the previous year that exemplifies the dignity and esteem the essay form imparts to literature.

Dr. Carl Hart won the $10,000 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for High Price (Harper). Akiko Busch, Rivka Galchen, and Eileen Pollack judged. The annual award is given for a book of literary nonfiction published in the previous year on the subject of the physical or biological sciences.

Ruth Ellen Kocher and Nina McConigley both won the $5,000 PEN Open Book Award, given for an exceptional book published in the previous year and written by an author of color. Kocher won for her poetry collection domina Un/blued (Tupelo Press); McConigley won for her short story collection Cowboys and East Indians (FiveChapters Books). Catherine Chung, Randa Jarrar, and Monica Youn judged.

Frank Bidart won the $5,000 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, which is given biennially to a poet whose distinguished and growing body of work to date represents a notable and accomplished presence in American literature. Peg Boyers, Toi Derricotte, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips judged.

Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley won the $3,000 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for Diaries of Exile (Archipelago Books), a poetry collection by the Greek poet, Yannis Ritsos. Kimiko Hahn judged. The annual award is given for a book-length translation of poetry into English published in the previous year.

Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov won the $3,000 PEN Translation Prize for their translation from the Russian of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s short story collection Autobiography of a Corpse (New York Review of Books). Ann Goldstein, Becka McKay, and Katherine Silver judged. The annual award is given for a book-length translation of prose into English published in the previous year.

The winners will be honored at PEN’s annual literary awards ceremony, held this year on September 29 at the New School in New York City. At the ceremony, PEN will announce the winners of the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the $25,000 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. Ron Childress, who won the $25,000 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for his unpublished novel And West is West, will also be honored at the ceremony.

The shortlist and the longlist, issued for the first time this year, for each prize can be found on PEN’s website.

There are few things more pleasant than finding a beautiful spot on a sunny afternoon to have a picnic lunch. That's if everything goes according to plan. This week, write a story about one of your characters planning an important picnic lunch. The occasion could be a family gathering, a first date, or a holiday celebration. How does this character handle the task? Do things end up going smoothly, or does everything fall apart? Maybe another character needs to step in and offer assistance, or maybe something beyond anyone's expectations occurs and the plans change completely.

Occasionally we have those dreams we wake up from and can't seem to shake from our sleepy heads. Some people insist that if you remember your dream vividly, it's a sign that there's a message contained within that you're supposed to remember, or something you're supposed to learn from. This week, write a poem using a recent dream as inspiration. Draw from the fantastical, nonsensical images your brain conjured up, and the logic that seems to make sense only inside your dreaming mind.

Deep within us, we have desires or goals we might be nervous about bringing out into the open for whatever reason. Maybe we feel embarrassed or that we can't compete with those who have already mastered the skill we seek to learn. You might have felt this way when showing your writing to someone for the first time—or maybe you still haven't shown your writing to anyone yet. This week, think about whether there are any factors that make it difficult for you to share your work. If you've taken the leap and put yourself out there, write about what that felt like. If you have yet to do so, write about what's holding you back.

The Man Booker Prize Foundation announced the longlist today for the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. This year marks the first time in the prize's history that any author, irrespective of nationality, with work written originally in English and published in the United Kingdom, is eligible to win.

The longlist includes Howard Jacobson, a former Man Booker winner, for J (Jonathan Cape); two previously shortlisted authors, Ali Smith for How to Be Both (Hamish Hamilton) and David Mitchell for The Bone Clocks (Sceptre); and the Anglo-Indian writer Neel Mukherjee for The Lives of Others (Chatto & Windus). The American writers making the longlist are Richard Powers for Orfeo (Atlantic Books), Siri Hustvedt for The Blazing World (Sceptre), Joshua Ferris for To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Viking), and Karen Joy Fowler for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Serpent’s Tail). British writers Paul Kingsnorth for The Wake (Unbound) and David Nicholls for Us (Hodder & Stoughton); Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Chatto & Windus); and Irish writers Joseph O’Neill for The Dog (Fourth Estate) and Niall Williams for History of the Rain (Bloomsbury) round out the list.

The panel of six judges is chaired by British philosopher A. C. Grayling. The decision to expand the prize this year has been controversial; previously the prize was restricted to authors from Britain and other countries in the Commonwealth, as well as Ireland and Zimbabwe. Last year, Eleanor Catton, a novelist from New Zealand, won the prize for her 832-page novel The Luminaries. At 28, Catton was the youngest recipient of the award in its forty-five-year history. 

The shortlist will be announced on September 9, and the winner—who will receive a £50,000 (approximately $85,177) purse—will be announced on October 14.

Photos: Fowler (left), Ferris (right)

Some people slow down in their golden years, taking it easy and enjoying the family and friends they've gathered around them in the comfort of their community, while others try to continue to live like their younger selves. This week, write a story about an older person who still has the mindset and physical stamina of a twenty-something. How does this affect her interactions with her peers? What are her secrets? Is she one of those people who wishes to live forever, or does she simply make a habit of staying healthy? Think about how a person's biological age and true age are related and what happens when they are in conflict.

It's easy to get bogged down by the ideas behind the poem you are writing, losing sight of the harmonic structure of the words themselves and the rhythm of lines and pauses. This week, chose a poem that you love and memorize it. Say it to yourself over and over again, until it escapes the page and makes a home in your body. Try not to think about how the poet would want it to sound—concentrate instead on how it sounds in your voice, how it inhabits you. Once you get comfortable with the process, try this with your own poems.

Hitchhiking can seem scary to those who have never done it before. But, as Jack Kerouac famously portrayed in On the Road, it is also a cheap and interesting way to get from one place to another if you don’t have a car. Have you ever hitched a ride, or do you know someone who has? Write about the experience. If you have never hitchhiked, write about your feelings on the subject—whether you’d ever try it, or why you’ve decided it’s something you would never do.

We've all heard the advice "write what you know," which encourages us to write characters like ourselves or people who are close to us. This week, write from the perspective of a character that is your complete opposite. First, make a list of all the qualities you identify with yourself, and then make a list of qualities on the other end of the spectrum. For example, if you are a woman who lives in the country, write from the point of view of a man who lives in the city. Try to avoid using stereotypes to describe this character's actions or ideas, and instead try to embody this character—climb inside his or her head and live there a while.

Nineteenth-century poet Walter Savage Landor's "On Love, on Grief" packs a punch in its brief simplicity: "On love, on grief, on every human thing, / Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing." Not only is the poem sonically beautiful, it also takes a cliché (time flies) and transforms it. As writers, we may occasionally stumble upon phrases or situations we want to write that are considered cliché. This week, take one of the clichés you often feel drawn to and try to refresh it.