Actor-playwright-educator Anna Deavere Smith, playwright Adrienne Kennedy and author-essayist Phillip Lopate are among this year's recipients of career achievement prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lopate, 78, won the $100,000 Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award for contributions to American literature. His books include the essay collections “Bachelorhood” and “Against Joie de Vivre” and the novels “Confessions of Summer” and “The Rug Merchant.” He has also edited such anthologies as “Writing New York” and “The Art of the Personal Essay.”
