Called by The New York Times “The Blue Collar PEN,” PEN Oakland invites you to join us for the 33rd Annual PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Awards. 

The PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Awards, named for the late poet and Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. In addition, there is an Adelle Foley Award, a Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism, a Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Gary Webb Anti-Censorship Award. 

The 2022 PEN Oakland Award winners will be formally recognized at this free virtual event, which will be broadcast live on the Oakland Public Library Facebook page.

The 2022 PEN Oakland Award Recipients are:

Josephine Miles Award

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books)

Susana Praver-Perez, Hurricanes, Love Affairs & Other Disasters(Nomadic Press)

Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The late Gloria Gervitz, translated from Spanish by Mark Schafer, Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020(New York Review of Books)

Joan Steinau Lester, Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White (University of Wisconsin Press)

CAConrad, Amanda Paradise, Resurrect Extinct Vibration(Wave Books)

Talib Kweli, Vibrate Higher(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Adelle Foley Award

Rusty Morrison

Second Annual Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism

Judy Grahn, Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender and Erotic Power(Sinister Wisdom, Inc. and Nightboat Books)

Gary Webb Anti-Censorship Award

Jefferson Morley

Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award

Nellie Wong

Bruce Anderson