Karen Tei Yamashita to receive honorary National Book Award

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The National Book Foundation announced Friday that Karen Tei Yamashita has been awarded its medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a $10,000 honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Robert Caro and Isabel Allende among others. The 70-year-old Yamashita is an author and playwright who in such fiction and meta-fiction as “I Hotel” and “Tropic of Orange” blends multiple perspectives and narrative styles. She may be little known to the general public in comparison to Morrison and other medal winners, but she is deeply admired by those who read her work. The foundation praises her work as “expansive and innovative” and “genre-defying.”