The PEN awards were announced this morning in a press release and now I can tell you who won the creative non-fiction award: Steve Lopez for The Soloist.  There were three of us judging this category and our emails back and forth to each other about the sixty books we had to choose from could make a book of its own.

I loved The Soloist, and as I analyzed it and wrote emails back and forth to the other two judges about it, I loved it even more. It’s a beautifully crafted memoir that explores not only Steve Lopez’s own inner life but also illuminates a much wider world – mental illness, the power of music, homelessness and poverty and the fate of print newspapers. His writing is so good that it’s transparent, and though he wrote the story of Nathaniel Ayers, Julliard educated and playing classical violin on the streets of L.A, in his L.A. Times columns, the book covers much more and reaches deeper.  From the opening hook to the brilliant last scene – this is a memoir writers should read. It’s an important book.