O ur annual awards ensure that their powerful voices will continue to be heard, at home and abroad.
Awards provide writers with the time and resources needed to hone their craft.
Awards inspire other authors to emulate them, expanding the nation's garden of literary excellence. Through our various programs and awards, we celebrate the talent and achievements of our novelists and poets, biographers and other non-fiction writers. That is our principal mandate. A t the same time, however, we are making an important investment in nationhood, in the development of a cultural legacy.