Book Award winners named

Poet Adrienne Rich and two founders of the New York Review of Books have been named recipients of honorary National Book Award medals, the National Book Foundation announced Wednesday.

The 77-year-old Rich, known for her passionate, socially conscious verse, has been awarded a Medal for Distinguished Contribution. Her previous honors include a National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle prize. She has also turned down an award, refusing the National Medal for the Arts in 1997 because it “is incompatible with the cynical politics of this [the Clinton] administration.”

The Literarian Award, given for “outstanding service to the American literary community,” goes to Robert Silvers and the late Barbara Epstein, who in the 1960s helped start the New York Review of Books, which is still a leading literary publication. Epstein died in June at age 76.