The National Book Foundation announced on Thursday it would present its 2017 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Annie Proulx, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning and National Book Award–winning The Shipping News, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning Postcards, and several other books. Her story, “Brokeback Mountain,” originally published in The New Yorker, won a National Magazine Award, won an O. Henry Award, and was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film.

Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, said, “Annie Proulx’s ability to explore the nuances of the human spirit and render deeply moving reflections on rural life have solidified her place in American Letters.”

Interviewed by the Associated Press, Proulx remarked she was surprised to win the award. “I was astonished when first I heard that news,” Proulx said. “I simply had not thought of my various writings as a body of work that might be considered as a contribution to American letters. It almost seemed that I had been negligent in writing what I considered discrete novels and stories instead of shaping a holistic something that might be regarded as a life work.”

Proulx is the 30^th recipient of the prize. In 2014, she was the keynote speaker at the AWP Conference & Bookfair in Seattle, Washington.