Two weeks after customs officials detained British memoirist Sebastian Horsley and prevented him from entering the United States, the PEN American Center has issued a letter of appeal to the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to review the case and allow the author to return to the country. Horsley, who flew back to the U.K. after the incident at Newark Liberty International Airport on March 18, has been invited to paricipate in PEN's World Voices Festival of International Literature at the end of this month.

 

Khaled Hosseini's novel A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead) was recently named the winner of the 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Award in the category of fiction by the American Booksellers Association. Barbara Kingsolver, along with coauthors Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, won in nonfiction for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins).

British author Sebastian Horsley, whose memoir, Dandy in the Underworld (Sceptre, 2007), depicts a lifestyle of copious drug use and exploitation of prostitutes, was denied entry into the United States last Tuesday. U.S. customs officials at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport detained Horsley, adorned in top hat and three-piece suit; after eight hours of questioning about his drug addiction and sexual exploits, he was deported.

The American Society of Magazine Editors announced yesterday the finalists for the 2008 National Magazine Awards. The annual awards, also known as the Ellies, honor print and online magazines "that consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative editorial techniques, noteworthy journalistic enterprise, and imaginative design." Among the 128 finalists in twenty-five categories were the usual titles—the New Yorker led the finalists with twelve nominations—but a number of literary magazines are also in the running.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced last week that novelist Kate Christensen has been awarded the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her fourth novel, The Great Man (Doubleday). She received $15,000.