William Gaddis Among Lannan Award Winners

The Lannan Foundation has announced 10 recipients of the 1993 Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships.

Awards, given for significant contributions to English-language literature, went to novelist William Gaddis for lifetime achievement, Paul West for fiction, Denise Levertov for poetry and Edward Hoagland for nonfiction.

Fellowships, which recognize writers of merit with potential for outstanding future work, were given to three fiction writers, Rikki Ducornet, Denis Johnson and Carole Maso; two poets, Cyrus Cassells and Benjamin Alire Saenz, and to Terry Tempest Williams for nonfiction.

The 10 authors will each receive $50,000. The Los Angeles-based foundation, which initiated the awards and fellowships in 1989, this year increased the number of honorees from nine to 10 and the amount of the awards from $40,000.

Gaddis, who has been described by the New York Times as “a presiding genius . . . of post-war American fiction,” is the author of three novels: “The Recognitions” (1955); “J R” (1975), for which he received the National Book Award, and “Carpenter’s Gothic” (1985). His fourth, “A Frolic of His Own,” will be published in January by Simon & Schuster.

The foundation, founded by the late financier and arts benefactor J. Patrick Lannan, has honored 39 writers with a total of more than $1.5 million.