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Proud to Have Been a Judge for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Works-in-Progress Awards, Announced Today

March 19, 2024/0 Comments/in Books & Writing /by Philip Turner

May 1, 2024—I received this message from administrators of the Lukas Prize at Columbia Journalism Graduate School regarding the ceremony scheduled for May 7 to honor the recipients of the awards:

“Out of an abundance of caution and with deep regret, we have decided to cancel this year’s Lukas Award Ceremony. With the volatile circumstances on campus, we feel it is in everyone’s best interest to delay this celebration until a later date when we can properly honor the winners, and thank you for your stellar work in judging these prizes.”
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Since early fall last year, I’ve been serving as one of three judges for the Works-in-Progress Awards of the J. Anthony Lukas Prizes, sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Collectively, we read nearly 100 nonfiction book proposals and mission statements submitted for consideration, with each of us reading approximately one-third of the entries, then arriving at a shortlist of fifteen titles, which was announced last month.

Following more discussion among the three of us, we chose two works-in-progress—whose authors will each receive $25,000—which have been announced today. The works-in-progress awardees are Body Weather: Notes on Illness in the Anthropocene by Lorraine Boissoneault (Beacon Press), which was in my original tranche of proposals, and The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company by Alice Driver (One Signal, Atria).

Here are the citations we wrote for the books:

Body Weather is a visceral work of reported essays, masterfully braided with narrative research. Lorraine Boissoneault tells the story of living with chronic illness at a time when the planet is in a state of dire suffering. Climate change is bringing more hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, fires and landslides. How will a distressed planet affect stressed, ill or disabled bodies? In poetic and haunting prose, Boissoneault unearths intersections between her unique experience living with illness, while also illuminating universal questions lodged within all of us: How do we learn to live with discomfort? “How do we seek refuge from our own bodies, from weather that wraps itself around the world?” The Lukas Prize will enable the author to travel from her home base in Chicago to the Saguenay fjord in northern Quebec, to Death Valley in California and to Australia’s outback to complete reporting for the book. Body Weather is a singular work of literary reportage, a firsthand, intimate account drawing profound connections between the body and the planet.

The Life and Death of the American Worker is a rigorously researched work of narrative nonfiction that exemplifies the spirit of holding powerful institutions accountable, while humanizing the individuals who have been systematically dehumanized by immigration law and unregulated labor practices. Powerful forces have tried to silence the project and the people who are part of it. Yet with deep access and empathy, Alice Driver tells the multifaceted stories of families who have filed a class-action lawsuit to hold Tyson responsible for the working conditions that caused the deaths of their loved ones. She conducted interviews in the various native languages of subjects, and the Lukas Award will go toward some of those translations. Although many journalists have held temporary jobs within meatpacking plants to write about the industry, Driver (who is from Arkansas and grew up around Tyson employees) is solely focused on the longterm experiences of immigrant workers who have been at Tyson for decades. Driver has performed a remarkable feat of investigative and narrative reporting in telling the stories of these essential yet often overlooked and exploited workers.

It was a pleasure to serve with my fellow judges, Chris Jackson, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, One World Publishing, Penguin Random House, and Erika Hayasaki, Professor at the University of California, Irvine, in the Literary Journalism Program, and author of Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity and the Meaning of Family (Algonquin Books, 2022). I also want to thank publishing friend Peter Ginna, who had been a Lukas juror in previous years, who recommended me for this assignment. I’m also grateful to Program Manager of Professional Prizes at Columbia Journalism School Susie Marples for her deft and genial handling of many matters.

I want to add that a great majority of the projects submitted to us were worthy of support and consideration. In the course of our deliberations, on many occasions one of us said to the others, “I wish we could recognize and support all these books!” As an affirmation of that reality, the graphic with this post shows the fifteen books shortlisted for all Lukas Prizes this year, including the five works-in-progress.

The J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Awards are given annually to aid in the completion of significant works of nonfiction on American topics of political or social concern. These awards assist in closing the gap between the time and money an author has and the time and money that finishing a book requires. J. Anthony Lukas (1933-1997) was the author of many books, including Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (Knopf, 1985), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Two other Lukas Prizes were announced today:

Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed by Dashka Slater (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, August 2023), the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize ($10,000).

A finalist for this prize was also recognized: Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley (Knopf, May 2023)

and

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk (Yale University Press, April 2023),
the Mark Lynton History Prize ($10,000)

A finalist for this prize was also recognized: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary Bass (Knopf, October 2023)

Congratulations to all the authors, as well as their editors and their literary agents! There will be a public ceremony on May 7 at the Columbia Journalism School, honoring all the authors and their work.

From the prize website: “Established in 1998, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project honors the best in American nonfiction writing. Co-administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and sponsored by the family of the late Mark Lynton, a historian and senior executive at the firm Hunter Douglas in the Netherlands, the Lukas Prize Project annually presents four awards in three categories.”

Inspired Readings by the 2014 NBCC Award Finalists

March 12, 2015/0 Comments/in Publishing & Bookselling /by Philip Turner

From the opening night of the National Book Critics Circle‘s annual two-night literary extravaganza, here are pictures I took of some of the finalists who read excerpts from their nominated books. They gave inspired renderings of their work. The awards will be given tonight, in six categories—Poetry, Criticism, Biography, Autobiography, Nonfiction, Fiction—at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium on W. 11th Street at 6pm, free admission. I hope to sit even closer to the stage tonight, for the best possible pictures.

Night II of the NBCCs–Book Prizes Awarded

March 14, 2014/0 Comments/in Books & Writing, Philip Turner's Books & Writing, Urban Life & New York City /by Philip Turner

Monday March 17 update, video of the NBCC Awards ceremony:

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The concluding evening of the National Book Critics Circle annual awards last night at the New School auditorium was a jubilant celebration of the book with generous recognitions given to critics and authors alike. Having enjoyed the author readings on Wednesday night I was eager to hear who the winners would be. The program began with remarks by NBCC president Laurie Muchnick, reminding the audience that members of the organization spend months each year reading and keenly debating the merits of all the books in the six categories. With the housekeeping taken care of, the procession of awards began.

First up it was time for a new award, the John Leonard Prize, named in memory of the longtime NBCC member and ebullient NY Times reviewer. Each year it will be given to an author for a first book, in any genre. It had earlier been announced that Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth Press at Crown Publishing) was the inaugural recipient. His novel is set amid the war in Chechnya. Then, Katherine A. Powers, who has a regular books column in the BN Review, received the NBCC’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. She gave a congenial talk setting forth her own principles of reviewing. Among these was that she tries to avoid lordly pronouncements of approval or condemnation, as if she were representing some “cohort of worthies.” She declared herself in service to the reader and the author, and quoted a memorable line from H.L. Mencken: “Criticism is prejudice made plausible.” Next, pioneering man of Hispanic letters Rolando Hinojosa-Smith received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the literature of Mexican-Americans.

After naming all five poet finalists, chair of the Poetry committee David Biespiel began the presentation of awards that, unlike the three above, were not decided until yesterday afternoon, only a few hours before this ceremony. After naming all the poet finalists while their four book jackets flashed across the on-stage screen, David announced that Frank Bidart was the recipient of the NBCC for his book Metaphysical Dog (FSG). Bidart brought some papers to the lectern, and joked that each time he’s nominated for something, he prepares remarks and when he doesn’t win, files them away, continually adding to them each time he’s on a shortlist. This got a laugh from the audience, especially, after he said, “It’s true.” In fact, his acceptance speech was an elegant one. He described himself as a neo-modernist, not a post-modernist, saying he didn’t feel the need to be in conflict with his poetic predecessors. As to his own work, citing the words of a critic who upon hearing Maria Callas for the first time had written that the experience was like “biting in to a lemon,” he offered a hope that his own poems offer readers a similarly astringent quality. Quoting a great sentence from King Lear, “Ripeness is all. Come on.” Bidart pointed out that profound as it is, it’s not actually the last line of the scene. Instead, Gloucester points playgoers to the plurality of existence, uttering, “That’s true, too.”

Next, the award in Criticism was given to Franco Moretti for his book Distant Reading (Verso Press), with essays that use data, charts and other apparatus to consider reading in new ways. With Moretti’s arrival at the lectern he made a confession that held true the rest of the night: he had not expected to win and didn’t prepare remarks. He had a lovely Italian accent and the audience found him charming.

With a new precedent oddly established by Moretti, each of of the four recipients who followed uttered a version of the same thing, accepting the award graciously, and briefly. As it happened, four times in a row, the audience laughed a little more at it, as the recipient would sheepishly cop to his or her forgivably mild dereliction. Mild because audiences always expect to be held for a long time, and this was a veritable vacation from standard awards palaver.

Autobiography committee chair Eric Banks announced Amy Wilentz and her book on Haiti, Farewell, Fred Voodoo (Simon & Schuster), as the recipient of the NBCC. Once behind the lectern Wilentz explained that she’d written earlier books on Haiti–a country she called her “muse”–and this one was the most autobiographical of them, but she implied that because it wasn’t a proper autobiography she had really expected a different winner to be called up to the stage. And her category was very strong, filled with great writers of first-person narrative, a favored genre of mine. Next up, Leo Damrosch, winner in Biography for Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (Yale University Press), said that he’d always written for academics and so doubted his book would be selected. He was off before I could take a picture, so the one with this post is the one I took the night before, at the readings. Sheri Fink, whose Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown Publishing) I first heard about when her editor Vanessa Mobley presented it at last year’s BEA Buzz panel. Fink seemed truly taken aback at this recognition given to her book. For the last award, in fiction, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of Nigeria allowed as how she had been so tickled to be on the same shortlist as her former professor, Alice McDermott, she just hadn’t thought her novel Americanah would win. As she walked to the stage, she shouted in jubilation, a celebration the audience audibly shared with her.

With that the ceremony–in a tidy 90 minutes–was over. Most of the audience repaired to another New School building one block away for the gala reception. A hungry and thirsty crowd met there and partied for a much greater stretch of time than the ceremony’s duration. During the party I met and spoke with many of the finalists: critic Katherine A. Powers; poet Denise Duhamel; essayist Franco Moretti; Marianne Moore biographer Linda Leavell; Whitey Bulger chroniclers Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, and their editor at W.W. Norton, Tom Mayer; observer of New Orleans’ tragic triage, Sheri Fink; novelist Ruth Ozeki; and one of my favorite writers at The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright, whose reading from Going Clear I had found so chilling the night before. I also enjoyed talking with NBCCers Walton Mayumba, Karen Long, Anne Trubek, Tom Beer, Eric Liebetrau and his writer wife, Signe; Ron Charles; and Marcela Valdes. Also enjoyed meeting for the first time one of my favorite tech writers, Andrew Leonard, there celebrating the memory of his father John Leonard; book agent, Andrew Blauner; editor Philip Marino of Liveright; journalist Casey Schwartz, Riverhead Books publicist Katie Freeman; and indie publicist Michelle Blankenship. Below are my pictures from last night. If you enjoyed this post, don’t miss its counterpart on the readings.

Finalists’ Readings at Last Night’s NBCCs

March 13, 2014/1 Comment/in Books & Writing, Philip Turner's Books & Writing, Urban Life & New York City /by Philip Turner

Monday March 17 update, video of the NBCC Readings night:

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As I try to do every March when the calendar comes round to the annual awards week of the National Book Critics Circle, I attended last night’s program of readings given by many of the nominated finalists. To the left is the evening’s program. Highlights were numerous, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s humorous narrator’s observations about blogging, of all things, from her novel, Americanah; Alice McDermott, with a carefully paced reading from Someone; Ruth Ozeki’s rendering of the book-within-a-book in A Tale for the Time Being; I later had a nice conversation with Ozeki about a favorite novel of mine that also has a book-within; Denise Duhamel read a narrative poem that cleverly portrayed a bickering couple observing a bickering couple from a distance, from her collection Blowout; Hilton Als, with a personal essay about Malcolm X and his mother, from White Girls; Rebecca Solnit read a passage from The Faraway Nearby about a basket of fragrant apricots; Amy Wilentz’s evocation of a chaotic street scene in Haiti from Farewell, Fred Voodo; Scott Anderson with T.E. Lawrence’s surprising refusal of a knighthood from the British monarch; Leo Damrosch’s bawdy portrait Jonathan Swift in His Life and His World; Sheri Fink’s shocking chronicle of doctors and nurses in Katrina-stricken New Orleans resorting to euthanasia in Five Days at Memorial; George Packer’s grim rendering of societal decline, typified by a Rust-belt denizen in The Unwinding; and Lawrence Wright’s chilling account of brow-beating and mistreatment among scientologists in Going Clear.

All day today, NBCC board members will be making their final selections from the shortlists. I look forward to going back tonight to The New School auditorium in Greenwich Village for the ceremony, and for the festive reception that follows. The NBCC is a great organization of dedicated readers and writers. You can follow them on Twitter, @BookCritics, and check them out on the web, NBCC. Writing students at The New School interview each of the finalists, so you can also look for those videotaped conversations on the NBCC site. If you live in New York City, I recommend you attend the readings and/or the awards night, for these are two of the best literary nights of the year. Both events are free of charge, with only the fund-raiser/reception having an admission fee. If you want to support the work of the NBCC and their awards–the only book prizes given by full-time critics and reviewers–you can sign up to become an associate, non-voting member. I renew my membership each year. Here are the best pictures I took from my seat last night.