Awards 2026 Lifetime

Salman Rushdie is the bestselling author of 23 books, including Midnight’s Children, for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker Prize; Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories; two memoirs, Joseph Anton and Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, including Languages of Truth. His work has been translated into over 40 languages.

Perri Klass, MD is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University where she directs the Medical Humanities minor. She attended Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston. Klass is the author of The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future, A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student, and Baby Doctor: A Pediatrician’s Training. Her other books include four novels, and she writes regularly about children’s issues for many publications. Klass is the longtime National Medical Director of Reach Out and Read and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.