Ian McEwan Wins Kenyon Review Award

Ian McEwan, a British novelist whose work has earned him worldwide acclaim, has been named the winner of the 2006 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. McEwan, the author of Atonement, Amsterdam, and, most recently, Saturday, received the award at a gala dinner on November 9 at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City.

"Ian McEwan's fiction is notable for its fierce ethical engagements and its exceptional artistry," said David Lynn, editor of the Review, in announcing the award. "More than any other recent author, McEwan explores the unanticipated and often brutal collisions between the ordinary and the extraordinary."

The Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement was first presented in 2002 to novelist E.L. Doctorow '52. Novelist and short-story writer Joyce Carol Oates received the award in 2003, while poet Seamus Heaney won it in 2004. Last year the winners were Umberto Eco, the novelist, and Roger Angell, the New Yorker fiction editor and baseball writer.

Proceeds from the dinner, and from the live and silent auctions that accompany it, benefit the Kenyon Review's endowment fund, which supports not only the literary journal but also scholarships and fellowships to the Review's summer writing programs, the Writers Workshop for adults and the Young Writers program for high-school students.

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