The 2006 PEN Literary Awards were presented in New York on the evening of Monday, May 22, at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center.

The PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, established by a bequest from Hunce Voelcker is given to a poet whose distinguished and growing body of work to date represents a notable and accomplished presence in American literature. The poet honored by the award is one for whom the exceptional promise seen in earlier work has been fulfilled, and who continues to mature with each successive volume of poetry. The award is given in even-numbered years and carries a stipend of $5,000.

“Linda Gregg has been writing poetry for over forty years. A visionary poet in a world that is ‘always too much with us,’ Ms. Gregg has never taken on a full-time job, preferring to devote herself to poetry, and while she has on occasion taught at the University of California, Iowa, and Princeton, she would rather be walking down the Old Byzantine trail on Paros in Greece or along the Indonesian shores of Pangaritis. In each of her books (Too Bright to See, Alma, The Sacraments of Desire, Chosen by the Lion, Things and Flesh, and In the Middle Distance), daily life is refreshed by the return to a mythic sublime, honoring a realm where solitude and solidarity are joined in a precarious dance,” wrote 2006 judges Michael Hofmann, Timothy Liu, and Vijay Seshadri.