By Michael Rogers

• Celebrates outstanding books by writers of color
• Winners to be honored at October celebration

Francine Prose, president of PEN American Center (www.pen.org), and Elissa Schappell, its Literary Awards Committee chair, May 15 announced the recipients of the 2008 PEN Beyond Margins Award, which celebrates “outstanding books by writers of color published in the United States during the previous year.” This year’s winners are:

Chris Abani, Song for Night (Akashic)
Amiri Baraka, Tales of the Out and the Gone (Akashic)
Frances Hwang, Transparency (Back Bay)
Naeem Murr, The Perfect Man (Random)
Joseph M. Marshall III, The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn (Viking) l
The judges were Allison Hedge Coke, Karen Shepard, and Luis Alberto Urrea. The 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins winners will be honored in October at the Beyond Margins Celebration. Sponsored by the Open Book Program, the Beyond Margins Award is one of the many ways in which the Open Book Program encourages racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities, the group said.