Mia Alvar has won the 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Alvar’s win comes with $25,000 in prize money.
According to the press release, the announcement was made during the PEN Literary Awards ceremony in New York City last night. Alvar earned this award for her debut short story collection, In the Country: Stories. Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint at Penguin Random House, published this book in March 2016.
During her acceptance speech, Alvar gave the following statement: “I want to acknowledge a special debt to the Filipino-American and Filipino literary community. These are poets and fiction writers and everything in between who have been working for generations out of sense ofurgency and love, and not always visible rewards. I thank them for the stories they’ve told and inspired me with, and also for welcoming me so generously into their conversation—or party, more accurately.”