Tommy Orange wins PEN/Hemingway Award for debut novel

NEW YORK (AP) - Author Tommy Orange keeps winning awards.

The author of "There There," the most honored literary debut of 2018, has received the PEN/Hemingway award for "distinguished" new novel. Orange's previous awards included a prize from the National Book Critics Circle for best new book and the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. "There There" is set in the Bay Area and tells the story of a loosely connected community of Native Americans. Orange, an Oakland native, is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

For the PEN/Hemingway award, Orange receives $25,000, along with a month-long fellowship at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Previous winners include Colson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders.