MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Maplewood Library recently announced that Pamela Erens will be the recipient of the 2017 Maplewood Literary Award. The award will be a highlight of the library’s Ideas Festival, which will mark its fourth year in 2017.
Erens is the author of the novels “Eleven Hours,” “The Virgins” and “The Understory.” She has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award.
“Eleven Hours,” Erens’ most recent novel, has received acclaim from The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and many other publications, while “The Virgins” was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, The New Republic and Library Journal.
Erens’ essays and criticisms have appeared in venues such as Vogue, Elle, The New York Times, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Millions. Reader’s Digest named Erens one of “23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now.”
“‘I’m honored’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but, truly, I am honored by this,” Erens said in a press release. “I’m dazzled that the library would think to give me an award previously received by Paul Auster and Dan Barry.”
The Ideas Festival will take place in March and April of 2017, with the Literary Award program tentatively scheduled for Saturday, April 1.
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