The Diana and Simon Raab Foundation generously funds several awards at Santa Barbara City College.

The Raab Award in Creative Nonfiction is presented annually to a writer with a distinguished body of work in that genre.

The 2008 winner of the $1,000 Raab Award is Phillip Lopate, who is generally credited with being one of the most important figures in the recent resurgence of literary nonfiction writing.

Mr. Lopate will give a free public reading of his work at Santa Barbara City College on Friday, February 22, at 7 p.m., in the Atkinson Art Gallery in the Humanities Building on SBCC's East Campus.

Phillip Lopate was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, and received a BA from Columbia in 1964, and a doctorate from the Union Graduate School in 1979. He has written three personal essay collections -- Bachelorhood (Little, Brown, 1981), Against Joie de Vivre (Poseidon-Simon & Schuster, 1989), and Portrait of My Body (Doubleday-Anchor, 1996); two novels, Confessions of Summer (Doubleday, 1979) and The Rug Merchant (Viking, 1987); two poetry collections, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (Sun Press, 1972) and The Daily Round (Sun Press, 1976); a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children (Doubleday, 1975); a collection of his movie criticism, Totally Tenderly Tragically (Doubleday-Anchor); an urbanist meditation, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (Crown, 2004); and a biographical monograph, Rudy Burckhardt: Photographer and Filmmaker (Harry N. Abrams, 2004.) In addition, there is a Phillip Lopate reader, Getting Personal: Selected Writings (Basic Books, 2003).

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The Raab Foundation also sponsors a student essay competition with a generous cash prize: the Raab Award for Student Creative Nonfiction.