SOURCE: ABCNEWS
Actor-playwright-educator Anna Deavere Smith, playwright Adrienne Kennedy and author-essayist Phillip Lopate are among this year's recipients of career achievement prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lopate, 78, won the $100,000 Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award for contributions to American literature. His books include the essay collections “Bachelorhood” and “Against Joie de Vivre” and the novels “Confessions of Summer” and “The Rug Merchant.” He has also edited such anthologies as “Writing New York” and “The Art of the Personal Essay.”
WHAT IS THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS?
source- wikipedia
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headquarters is in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It shares Audubon Terrace, a Beaux Arts/American Renaissance complex on Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets, with the Hispanic Society of America and Boricua College.