Sister Mariella Gable Award winner honored again

Claudia Rankine, the 2014 recipient of the College of Saint Benedict Literary Arts Institute's Sister Mariella Gable Award, has won the PEN Open Book Award for her book, "Citizen: An American Lyric." The PEN American Center is dedicated to defending writers and free speech on an international scale.

"Citizen" is a collection of essays and prose poems that looks at both overt racism and small daily racist acts Rankine calls microaggresions. Winner of the NAACP Image Award, the L.A. Times Book Prize, a National Book Critic Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award, "Citizen" is now a finalist for the Forward Prize in the United Kingdom.

The Sister Mariella Gable Award is given each year by CSB for an important work of literature published by Graywolf Press. Gable was a Dante scholar, poet, editor, writer and champion of new fiction. She was an outstanding English professor who taught at CSB from 1928-73.

Graywolf Press and the Literary Arts Institute at CSB have formed a partnership, exploring innovative ways to promote the literary arts to audiences on campus, in the surrounding area and in the Twin Cities.