Sarah Jessica Parker will receive PEN America’s PEN/Audible Literary Service Award at its annual gala on May 15, the literary nonprofit announced in a news release.
Parker, the actor known for her roles on the series Sex and the City and …And Just Like That, has long been an advocate for books. She has founded two book imprints, most recently SJP Lit at Zando, which publishes titles including Kim Coleman Foote’s Coleman Hilland Linda Grant’s The Story of the Forest.
She is the executive producer of The Librarians, a documentary about a Texas-based group of librarians who fight book bans, and was recently announced as a judge of the prestigious Booker Prize, alongside authors Roddy Doyle, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Kiley Reid, and Chris Power.
PEN America co-CEO Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf said in a statement, “We are now at a crisis point with books by underrepresented writers being pulled from school libraries and classrooms. Sarah Jessica Parker is pushing back against these bans as an indispensable defender of the freedom to read and by shining a light on exceptional new voices of American contemporary literature through her publishing imprint SJP Lit.”
Past winners of PEN America’s literary service award include Paul Simon, Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jodi Picoult, and Gay Talese.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
