what a special honor for me to introduce carolyn kroll reidy, my longtime publisher at simon & schusterfriend at this year's pen america honoree. the story of carolyn's love affair witbos gins with the image of a little girl holding a flashlight under the covers so she could read her favorite books long past the time she was supposed to be asleep, into the early hours of the morning. her love affair deepened in college and graduate school where she studied english literature on her way to obtaining a phd and becoming an english professor. little could she have realized or imagined the focus of her dissertation, the complex relationship between the writer and the reader and the high victorian novel would come to fruition from the height of the publishing industry where in a profoundly personal way she would help thousands of writers across all genres to bridge the magical space between the act of writing and the act of reading. when her husband stephen came to columbia business school, carolyn left the phd program although she did eventually finish her dissertation and on the strength of

and carolyn reidy, publisher extraordinaire of mr. king, my lucky self and my brilliant predecessor and president at pen america for the past three years who had a child graduate tonight and cannot be here. -- her husband passed away last weekend. he will be deeply missed. the very first pen america dinner was held in april of 1922. it was at the coffeehouse club. just 40 guess likely included eugene o'neill and robert frost who were among the first members. a letter was read aloud by john, the first president of penn international who said we writers are in some sort of -- if we harm the human race the better we know each other, the greater the chance for human happiness in a world not as yet to happy. ninety-six years later, the world this not yet as happy. those were the statements that gets at the basic ideas behind the fontina pen. the resented power of literary values could reach into the wider world and improve it. what are the literary values? one is curiosity, a desire to move outside the frame of the individual perspective.