NAMES IN THE NEWS : E. L. Doctorow Wins PEN Award

Auhor E. L. Doctorow is winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for best American fiction published in 1989 for his eighth novel, “Billy Bathgate,” the Folger Shakespeare Library announced today.

Doctorow, 59, a professor at New York University, will receive a $7,500 cash prize at an awards ceremony May 12 at the library, which administers the awards. Four finalists will receive $2,500 each.

Doctorow’s award-winning novel is about a young man from the Bronx who becomes the protege of the infamous 1930s gangster, Dutch Schultz. Doctorow previously had won the National Book Critics Circle Award for “Billy Bathgate” and “Ragtime” and the National Book Award for “World’s Fair.”

The PEN/Faulkner Award was founded by American writers 10 years ago to pay tribute to novelist William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize money to encourage other writers. The award is associated with the American branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization whose name is an acronym for poets, playwrights, editors, essayists and novelists.

The four other nominees who also will be honored at the May 12 ceremony are Russell Banks, Molly Gloss, Josephine Jacobsen and Lynne Sharon Schwartz.