Chicago Tribune announces 2013 Literary and Heartland Award Winners

CHICAGO, July 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Edward Albee, three-time Pulitzer Prize and two-time Tony Award-winning playwright, will be recognized with the 2013 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement. The prize will be awarded on November 3 as part of a day of literary events co-presented by the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row program and the 24^th annual Chicago Humanities Festival.

Albee is best known for such acclaimed works as "The Zoo Story," "The Sandlot" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Albee has produced 32 plays throughout his 55-year career, with his first play, "The Zoo Story," only taking him three weeks to produce. 

"In selecting Edward Albee for the Chicago Tribune Literary Prize, we honor not only a great playwright, but an artist who is a mentor and an inspiration to new generations of writers," said Chicago Tribune editor and senior vice president Gerould Kern. "A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Albee is most recognized for 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,' a work as compelling and relevant as when it debuted in 1962. Perhaps less known, but profoundly important, is his work with the Edward F. Albee Foundation and its devotion to the development of younger playwrights and the advancement of theater today."

"Albee joins a truly distinguished roster of dramatists to receive the Tribune Literary Prize, including Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner, August Wilson and Sam Shepard," added Kern. "We are honored to bestow this award upon him."

Other past recipients of the Literary Prize, which was first awarded in 2002, include Elie Wiesel, Margaret Atwood, Tom Wolfe, Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen Sondheim.

Heartland Prizes

The Chicago Tribune also will present the winners of the 2013 Heartland Prizes for fiction and non-fiction at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will be awarded the Heartland Prize for fiction in celebration of her most recent novel "Americanah." A 2008 MacArthur Foundation "genius award" recipient, Adichie writes about issues of identity, displacement and dislocation. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications such as The New Yorker and the Financial Times.

Thomas Dyja will be honored with the Heartland Prize for non-fiction for "The Third Coast," a cultural history of his hometown of Chicago. Originally from Chicago's Northwest Side, Dyja comes at the American experience from a unique angle, looking at mid-century Chicago when so much of what is considered truly American – McDonald's, Playboy, Great Books – was born. He elucidates this profound impact on America and also speaks to the waning of post-war creativity in Chicago.

"Both 'Americanah' and 'The Third Coast' are stylish books that forcefully, but elegantly, engage with some of the most enduring American questions about conformity, isolation and creativity and we admire their ambition and passion," said Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune literary editor.

Chicago Tribune established the Heartland Prizes in 1988 to annually recognize a novel and work of non-fiction that reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America.  The Literary and Heartland Prizes are a part of the Tribune's ongoing commitment to the written word and support of literacy.

These literary awards, along with the Nelson Algren Short Story Award and Young Adult Literary Prize, are part of the Tribune's Printers Row program, an effort to inspire reading and readers throughout the year through its weekly Printers Row Journal, fiction inserts, monthly author talks and annual Printers Row Lit Fest.

About Chicago Tribune Media Group:
Chicago Tribune Media Group is a media and business services company that publishes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune. CTMG also produces related print and interactive media serving Chicagoland like RedEye, Hoy, Chicago Magazine, Naperville Magazine, TribLocal, TheMash, chicagotribune.com, chicagonow.com and metromix.com. Reaching 4.8 million adults each week in the greater Chicago area, CTMG is the leading news and  information destination in Chicagoland. 

About the Chicago Humanities Festival:
The Chicago Humanities Festival creates opportunities for people of all ages and circumstances to explore, enjoy, and be enriched by the arts and humanities. It accomplishes this through annual festivals such as the Fall Festival and the spring Stages, Sights and Sounds Festival, and by presenting educational programs throughout the year that encourage the study and enjoyment of the humanities.

This year's fest, titled Animal: What Makes Us Human, will take place November 1-10 in downtown Chicago. The festival will explore what it means to think about culture biologically, biology culturally, and the human-animal relationship beyond the science/humanities divide. For more information and to view the full schedule (available after August 14), visit chicagohumanities.org

SOURCE Chicago Tribune