Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim will receive the 2017 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award at PEN America's annual Literary Gala on April 25 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Actress Meryl Streep, who starred in the 2014 film adaptation of Sondheim's Into the Woods, will present the prize.

PEN America, the country's largest writer-driven free expression advocacy organization, "confers the Literary Service Award annually to a critically acclaimed writer whose body of work helps us understand and interpret the human condition, engendering empathy and imagination in even the darkest hours," says the organization. Past winners include J.K. Rowling, Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood.

"Stephen Sondheim's oeuvre is profoundly literary in its elegiac reaching for the truth of who we are, how we love, and how we strive to locate meaning in our work," said author Andrew Solomon, president of PEN America. "He will be the first composer-lyricist to receive this award, which recognizes his nuanced insight into human character. His support for a new generation of writers makes him a literary citizen of the first order."

He is also the winner of at least 60 individual and collaborative Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Paying forward the mentorship of Oscar Hammerstein II that catalyzed his successful career, Sondheim dedicates much of his time to nurturing young writers and composers, including Adam Guettel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Jonathan Larson. In 1981, he also founded Young Playwrights Inc., the only organization of its kind committed to the development of aspiring playwrights under age 18.

Nonesuch has released several Broadway cast recordings of works by Stephen Sondheim, including Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Company, and A Little Night Music; the soundtrack for the film Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp; the original cast recordings of Road Show and Bounce; the original New York cast of Saturday Night; and the first-ever recording of The Frogs.

For more on the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award, visit pen.org.