SELC Calls for Submissions for the Phil Reed Environmental Writing Awards

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—The Southern Environmental Law Center is now accepting submissions for the 2019 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Awards. Nominations are welcome from anyone, including readers, authors and publishers.

Presented each year during the Virginia Festival of the Book, the Reed Awards recognize outstanding writing on the southern environment in two categories: the Book category for works of nonfiction (not self-published) and the Journalism category for newspaper, magazine and online writing published by a recognized institution such as a news organization, university or nonprofit group.

• All submissions must have been published between October 1, 2017, and September 30, 2018.
• Submissions must relate to the natural environment in at least one of the following states: Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Virginia.
• Submissions are due October 1, 2018, at SouthernEnvironment.org/submit.
• Journalism entries must be at least 3,000 words

There are three options for submitting entries: electronic copy, hard copy, or a website link where the submission is available for sale. Hard copy submissions will not be returned.

The Reed Awards celebrate writers who achieve both literary excellence and extraordinary insight into the South’s natural heritage. This year J. Drew Lanham, a wildlife ecologist at Clemson University, won the Book award for The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, a meditation on family, race, and the American landscape. Reporters Ken Fine and Erica Hellerstein won the Journalism award for “Hogwashed,” a three-part series on the impacts of eastern North Carolina’s industrial hog operations published in the North Carolina Triangle area’s Indy Week.

Other past winners include:

• Eminent biologist and Alabama native E.O. Wilson, the “father of biodiversity” and a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner;
• Veteran environmental journalists Charles Seabrook, a longtime contributor to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Ben Raines, an accomplished filmmaker as well as an award-winning reporter on the Gulf Coast;
• Writer, poet, and NPR commentator Janisse Ray, author of the celebrated Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a New York Times Notable Book and the winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award;
• University of the South forest biologist David George Haskell, a Pulitzer Prize finalist  and winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature and the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural history writing; and
• Author Deborah Cramer, a visiting scholar at MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative whose books have won awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering.

As in past years, the Reed Award winners will be selected by a panel of judges that includes leading environmental writers, journalists and advocates. The awards honor the late Phillip D. Reed, a distinguished attorney, a committed environmental activist and a founding trustee of SELC.

Please contact Jessica Hamilton, Reed Award Administrator, at [email protected] or 434-977-4090 for additional information.

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For more than 30 years, the Southern Environmental Law Center has used the power of the law to champion the environment of the Southeast. With over 80 attorneys and nine offices across the region, SELC is widely recognized as the Southeast’s foremost environmental organization and regional leader. SELC works on a full range of environmental issues to protect our natural resources and the health and well-being of all the people in our region. www.SouthernEnvironment.org