Reed Award Judges

SELC is grateful to the writers, journalists and environmental advocates who generously volunteer their time and talent to serve as judges for the Reed Environmental Writing Award. Judges for the 2024/25 contest are:  

Megan Mayhew Bergman

Author, speaker, and teacher writing about the natural world. Author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Almost Famous Women, and How Strange a Season. Her columns have appeared in The Guardian and The Paris Review. She currently teaches literature and environmental writing at Middlebury College, where she also serves as Director of the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.

Bruz Clark

President and treasurer of the Chattanooga-based Lyndhurst Foundation and director of its Conservation and Physical Health and Education programs; executive director and secretary of the Riverview Foundation and former trustee and secretary of the Pathfinder Foundation; member of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, Land Trust Alliance, Southeastern Council of Foundations, and Timber Framers Guild; and former recipient of the SELC Dockery Award and Land Trust for the Little Tennessee Conservationist of the Year award. 

Deborah Cramer

Author of The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey, winner of the 2016 Reed Environmental Writing Award, as well as the Best Book Award from the National Academies of Science and the Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Also the author of Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage and Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World and a visiting scholar at the Environmental Solutions Initiative at MIT. 

Jim Detjen 

The Knight Chair, Emeritus, and founding president of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University; founding president of Society of Environmental Journalists; former award-winning reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Scott Gast

Writer and editor based in the Chicago area; former acquisitions editor for the University of Chicago Press and former features editor at Orion Magazine, where he was on the editorial staff for more than seven years. His work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Fund for Environmental Journalism. 

Latria Graham

Writer, editor and cultural critic currently living in South Carolina; contributor to online publications that focus their attention on social justice and equality; her articles have been featured by Garden & Gun, Our State, Southern Living, Oxford American, Outside Magazine, Backpacker, and numerous other publications.

Jay Leutze

Author of Stand Up That Mountain, winner of the 2012 Reed Environmental Writing Award; trustee for the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy; 2013 recipient of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest honor the governor can bestow on a North Carolina citizen.

Bill McKibben

Author of such books as Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?,  Deep Economy, The End of Nature, and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet; frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Orion, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and other publications; co-founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign; scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College.  

Charles Seabrook

Veteran environmental reporter formerly with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; author of Cumberland Island: Strong Women, Wild Horses from John F. Blair Publishers and The World of the Salt Marsh from the University of Georgia Press; winner of the 1998 Reed Environmental Writing Award. 

Paul Sloan

Board Chair of the Cumberland River Compact; former Deputy Commissioner Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation; founder of Partners in Conservation; co-founder Little Planet Publishing; founding board member Cumberland Region Tomorrow.