P E N W I N N E R ! ! !

I am extremely pleased and deeply honored to learn that my book has won the PEN AMERICAN CENTER’S OPEN BOOK AWARD for 2010.

From the judge’s note:
“Thank you Canyon for your work, your journey, your bravery, your compassion – for walking the women of Tibet all the way home and around the globe. On a tough loving train right into our hearts.”

As those of you who read the book know, this book was nearly two decades in the making – a lot of those years consigned to the dust heaps by dozens of editors and publishers. So it is sweet justice and a singular thrill to be recognized by the international literary community in this way. Thank you PEN American Center, and thanks to this year’s judges!

The PEN Center is a nearly 100-year old literary organization dedicated to literature, human rights and freedom of expression around the world.

The PEN American Center’s Open Book Award is for literary excellence in a book published in the United States in the current year by an author of color, living anywhere in the world. The work can be fiction, literary nonfiction, biography/memoir or poetry. Three winners were chosen out of approximately two hundred nominees. (Books which received wide media attention are not qualified). This award was previously called “Beyond Margins.”