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Aleksandar Hemon wins PEN fiction award

Bosnian writer subject of a 2008 Nextbook podcast

by
Stephanie Butnick
August 10, 2011
Aleksandar Hemon reading from The Lazarus Project at the 2008 PEN World Voices Festival.(Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center)
Aleksandar Hemon reading from The Lazarus Project at the 2008 PEN World Voices Festival.(Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center)

Today the PEN American Center announced the winners of the 2011 PEN literary awards. Taking home the prestigious PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for a Fiction Writer in Mid-Career (judged by Gary Shteyngart, no less) is Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Lazarus Project, The Question of Bruno, and Nowhere Man.

Hemon spoke with Tablet’s predecessor Nextbook in 2008, upon the publication of The Lazarus Project, about Bosnia, immigrants, and xenophobia.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.