Maxine Hong Kingston, NBCC award winner in nonfiction (pictured here announcing the NBCC nonfiction finalists in January at City Lights Books) will be honored by the National Book Foundation with its 2008 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Awards night is November 19. The National Book Awards shortlists will be announced October 15.
Also up for honors that night: NBCC Sandrof award winner Barney Rosset, who will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Rosset’s Grove Press Evergreen Review first published Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco, and many of the writers of the Beat generation.