Hundreds gather for PEN America gala, hosted by Awkwafina

NEW YORK – PEN America held 1 of New York's archetypal large indoor literate gatherings since the pandemic began past year, arsenic hundreds met Tuesday nighttime for the organization's yearly gala to grant writers, assemblage servants, governmental dissidents and specified salient nationalist figures arsenic Walt Disney enforcement seat Robert A. Iger.

After a virtual ceremonial successful 2020, attendees met astatine the gala's longtime venue — the American Museum of Natural History, nether the elephantine exemplary bluish whale. PEN, the literate and quality rights organization, required everyone to contiguous impervious of vaccination and impervious of a antagonistic trial wrong 72 hours of the event. Once inside, they were asked to deterioration masks erstwhile not “actively eating oregon drinking" for a nighttime which included a cocktail reception and a sit-down dinner.

Infection rates stay precocious successful New York City compared to aboriginal summer, though good beneath the pre-vaccine peaks of past wintertime and March-April 2020. A November literate tradition, the National Book Awards ceremony, volition beryllium held online for a 2nd consecutive twelvemonth due to the fact that of the virus. But PEN President Ayad Akhtar, the writer and playwright, called the gala a benignant of civic duty. He told the assemblage that aft 18 months of Zoom screens, a unrecorded gathering of writers and different artists, and the gradual re-opening of the PEN offices, mightiness animate others to “move forward.”

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“This is portion of what we consciousness we tin and indispensable do,” helium said.

According to PEN, astir 500 radical came to the gala, hundreds little than successful caller years. But the enactment inactive raised much than $3 million, PEN Chief Executive Officer Suzanne Nossel announced, a grounds for the event. Attendees included Min Jin Lee, Claudia Rankine and Walter Isaacson among others, a PEN spokesperson said, and a fewer peculiar presenters.

Lin-Manuel Miranda introduced Iger by praising Disney's handling of the movie mentation of “Hamilton” and his “willingness to bring artists to the table” and grant their voices. The writer and student Henry Louis Gates Jr., recipient of the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, was introduced by 2 aged friends: Jodie Foster, who studied nether him erstwhile she was attending Yale University, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian author-playwright who praised him for his efforts to illuminate the past for Black radical worldwide.

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Hosted by the actor-rapper Awkafina, the PEN gala was a defence of state of look and a informing against the dispersed of lies.

Iger, the night's “corporate honoree,” disquieted astir “polarization” and a “general disregard for the truth,” amplified and accelerated by modern technology. Honorees besides included the California nationalist wellness officials Mimi Khin Hall and Dr. Gail Newel, who were presented the PEN/Benenson Courage Award for what successful mean times would person seemed self-evident: Serving their communities. Both person faced threats and rage from those who denied the severity and adjacent the beingness of the coronavirus. Public wellness has ever been a challenge, Hall said, but during the pandemic she and her peers person faced "unprecedented hostility, fueled by misinformation and governmental divisiveness."

But, she, added, “when catastrophe presents itself, our committedness to humanity becomes much clear."

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Three imprisoned Iranian writer-activists, Baktash Abtin, Keyvan Bajan, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi, received the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, their prize accepted for them by playwright Lynn Nottage. She work a missive from the 3 dissidents thanking PEN and saying their thoughts were with the galore others persecuted successful Iran and beyond.

“Your award, successful fact, belongs to each of them,” the missive reads.

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