This is the ceremony at which the first PEN/Faulkner award was given out. The winner was Walter Abish, for the novel "How German Is It". The award was initiated and administered by the branch PEN South, and specifically by Mary Lee Settle. The ceremony occurred in the famous Rotunda at the University of Virginia. The award was, in part, a response to the cancellation of the National Book Awards in 1980, and distinguished itself from other awards by being funded and judged by writers, among them Tim O'Brien and Elizabeth Hardwick.
