The Lannan Literary Awards are a group of awards and fellowships given by the Lannan Foundation in the United States. These awards were created in 1989 to recognize both well-known and new writers whose work is of very high quality. According to the foundation, these awards are among the most valuable in literature. For example, in 2006, each award for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction came with $150,000.
The Lannan Foundation was started in 1960 by J. Patrick Lannan Sr., a businessman and supporter of the arts. The foundation describes its mission as supporting artists, writers, and Native American activists who work to promote cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity.
Many famous writers have received these awards, including David Foster Wallace, William Gaddis, Lydia Davis, William H. Gass, Steve Erickson, and W. S. Merwin. The foundation also honors people who are known for both their writing and their work in public discussions, such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Edward Said.
The foundation gives a special prize called the "Cultural Freedom Prize" to people who do important and brave work to support freedom of imagination, questioning, and expression. Past winners include Claudia Andujar, Helen Caldicott, Julián Cardona, Elouise P. Cobell, Mahmoud Darwish, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Robert Fisk, Eduardo Galeano, Arundhati Roy, Bryan Stevenson, and Cornel West.
The Lannan Foundation does not accept applications for its awards or fellowships. Instead, people suggest candidates anonymously through a network of writers, scholars, publishers, and editors. A committee within the foundation then decides who will receive the awards.
The foundation also gives money to tribes and organizations that help Native American communities. For example, from 1998 to 2009, it gave more than $7 million in grants to the Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund. This group was created by Elouise P. Cobell and her legal team to fight for Native Americans whose lands were mismanaged by the U.S. government. The legal case, called Cobell v. Salazar, began in 1996 and was settled in 2009.