Their winning ways with words

It’s no joke. On April 1, Ben Fountain will receive the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction, “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.’’ Fountain quit his law practice in 1988 and spent the next 17 years writing a failed novel and the stories that became his first book.
Patrick Hemingway, the son of writer Ernest Hemingway, will present the $8,000 prize. Edward P. Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Known World,’’ will be the keynote speaker at the ceremony at 3 p.m. at the JFK Library in Dorchester.
K.C. Frederick’s novel, “Inland,’’ Louise Gluck’s book of poems, “Averno,’’ and Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction narrative, “A Death in Belmont,’’ will receive the 2007 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Awards celebrating New England authors and settings.