The PEN American Center, the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization, has chosen the winners of the 2012 PEN Literary Awards. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie won the Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, and you can see the story brought to life by favorite book dramatist Barbara Rinella at MPPL on October 1.

Click here for category information and a complete list of winners. Highlights include

Robert W. Bingham Prize: Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

Achievement in American Fiction: E.L. Doctorow

Award for the Art of the Essay: Arguably by Christopher Hitchens

Literary Science Writing Award: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

Award for Literary Sports Writing: Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry

Illustrated Children’s Book: Never Forgotten by Patricia C. McKissack