Gass, Guare, Lucas win PEN awards

Playwrights John Guare and Craig Lucas and essayist William Gass were among the winners of literary awards announced Monday by the PEN American Center.

Guare, best known for such plays as “Six Degrees of Separation,” and Lucas, whose works include “Longtime Companion” and “Prelude to a Kiss,” received PEN/Laura Pels Foundation awards for midcareer playwrights.

Gass’ “Tests of Time,” winner of this year’s National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism, received the PEN/Spielvogel Diamonstein Award for “the art of the essay.”

Other PEN awards went to Rick Moody for his memoir, “The Black Veil”; poet Dana Levin for her collection, “In the Surgical Theatre”; and scholar Donald Keene for his “distinguished and extensive translations of both classical and modern Japanese literature.”

The PEN American Center is the largest of 132 centers of International PEN, founded in 1921 “to advance the cause of literature and reading and to defend free expression around the world.”