Daniel Mendelsohn’s collection of essays—Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture—has been shortlisted for the 2013 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Awarded each year by a panel of judges, the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award honors work that “exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.”
This year’s judges are Sven Birkerts, Robert Gottlieb, and Mark Kramer. The final winners and runners-up will be announced later this summer and will be honored at the 2013 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on Monday, October 21, 2013, at CUNY Graduate Center’s Proshansky Auditorium in New York City.