Updike wins Carl Sandberg Award

CHICAGO, June 7 (UPI) -- Pulitzer Prize winning author John Updike has been named winner of the 2005 Carl Sandberg Literary Award by the Chicago Public Library Foundation.

The prolific Updike, perhaps best known for his four-part "Rabbit" saga, will receive the award and speak at an Oct. 20 dinner at the Harold Washington Library Center, officials said Tuesday. Other prominent works include "The Witches of Eastwick," "Couples," and "The Centaur."

Updike is winner of two Pulitzers, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Medal of the Arts and the National Medal for the Humanities.

Past winners of the Sandberg award recognizing lifetime achievement in the literary arts include Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, David McCullough, Robert Caro and Yale University scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Playwright Tracy Letts, a member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble, was selected to receive the 21st Century Award presented annually to an emerging literary voice.