PEN Center USA, a literary nonprofit, awarded Boston University Professor Robert Pinsky with the Lifetime Achievement Award at its 21st Annual Literary Awards Festival at the Beverly Hills Hotel in California on Tuesday, according to a Nov. 8 press release.

Pinsky served as Poet Laureate of the United States for three terms, from 1997 to 2000. During his tenure, he founded the Favorite Poem Project to promote national involvement in poetry, according to his page on BU’s Creative Writing website. The project accepted the poetry of 18,000 Americans from diverse backgrounds and documented some of the submissions in book and DVD anthologies.

Pinsky instructs a poetry workshop with graduate writing students and works with them on their theses. He received his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and his Master’s and doctorate degrees from Stanford University. He has also taught at Wellesley College and the University of California, Berkley, according to his information page on BU’s website.

Pinsky’s own anthology, “Selected Poems,” was published this year, the release said. The Los Angeles Times awarded Pinsky a Book Prize for his translation of “The Inferno of Dante.” He is currently the poetry editor of the online magazine Slate.

His other works have been praised in both The New York Times and The Boston Phoenix, according to the website for the Steven Barclay Agency, which represents Pinsky.

LA Times writer Patt Morrison hosted the festival, which awarded prizes to writers the organization deemed the best of various categories, the release said.

PEN gave out 11 other awards at the festival, including awards for writers of fiction, research nonfiction, children’s literature, translation and graphic literature.

Other festival honorees included TV writer and producer Ellie Herman and authors Dave Eggers and Charles Bowden.
According to its site, PEN Center USA advocates for “the rights of writers around the world” and aims to generate interest in literature and to foster a literary community of writers living in the western states, the release said. Screenwriters, journalists, playwrights, novelists and other writers are among the organizations more than 800 members.

In the past, PEN has honored Woody Allen, Ray Bradbury, Sandra Cisneros, George Clooney and Matt Groening as Literary Award.