Reed Environmental Writing Award announces 2023 call for entries

Today the Southern Environmental Law Center announced a call for entries for the 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, celebrating writers who achieve both literary excellence and offer extraordinary insight into the South’s natural treasures and environmental challenges. Nominations are welcome from anyone, including readers, authors, and publishers. 

The Reed Award recognizes 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 digital writing published by a recognized institution such as a news organization, university, or nonprofit group.

As the South continues to grow and change, writers are increasingly exploring our relationship with the natural world and the environmental challenges we face as a region. SELC’s Reed Environmental Writing Award honors the best of these storytellers.

Erin Malec, director of communications

Authors have often drawn on the region’s unique natural treasures for inspiration and insight—from the haunting cypress swamps of Georgia to the tall mountains of western North Carolina to the rolling fields of the Virginia piedmont.

Each year, Reed Award winners are selected by a national panel of judges that includes leading environmental writers, journalists, and advocates. The awards honor the late Phillip D. Reed, a distinguished attorney, committed environmental activist, and a founding trustee of SELC.

Last year’s winners were Catherine Coleman Flowers, author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, and Alexis Okeowo, staff writer at The New Yorker for “The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt’s Wastewater Crisis.”