Judy Blume among authors given prizes by arts academy

NEW YORK -- Judy Blume will receive a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which also is honoring Elizabeth Kolbert, Paul Beatty and more than a dozen other writers.

Blume is being given the E.B. White Award, a $10,000 prize for young people's literature, the academy said Thursday. Beatty, author of the prize-winning novel "The Sellout," is among eight writers chosen for a $10,000 Arts and Letters prize for literary excellence. The others are Ayad Akhtar, Chris Bachelder, Kathleen Graber, Jennifer Haigh, Dominique Morisseau, Richard Sieburth and Luis Alberto Urrea.

Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer whose books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Sixth Extinction," is receiving a $25,000 award for achievement in nonfiction. Another New Yorker writer, dance critic Joan Acocella, won a $20,000 prize for "prose style."

Two authors who have been National Book Award finalists for fiction have been selected for prizes. Dana Spiotta has received the $20,000 John Updike Award for a midcareer writer. Karan Mahajan won a $10,000 award for a young writer of "considerable literary talent."

The academy, an honor society founded in 1898, awarded 19 writers in all. The prizes will be handed out in May at the academy's annual ceremonial.