Every year, the New York Times columnist David Brooks gives out a batch of Sidney prizes for the best long-form essays of the previous year. While he doesn’t try to give them to the same writers over and over, he does acknowledge that talent is not randomly distributed. “Some people just know how to write,” he notes. One such writer is Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard for his sympathetic profile of Marion Barry, the former Washington D.C. mayor, crack-smoker and alleged girlfriend stalker. “The people in his ward don’t just elect him, they possess him,” writes Labash. “They love him, admire him, even envy him.”
But it’s not just the left that’s producing fine work. The prize’s 2024 winners also include conservative writers, such as Tony Judt for his essay on the death of a friend and the “shame storm” of online viciousness that followed it. Another conservative is Helen Andrews, whose 2010 essay in First Things was an eye-opening look at the world of the Taliban and the Sunni-Shiite split that dominates modern Afghanistan.
This year’s winner in the history category is Kate Carte for her book, Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of North Carolina Press, 2021). A graduate of Sidney and then a Junior Research Fellow here, she has returned to the university as senior Tutor and Walter Grant Scott Fellow to do a PhD on royalist ideas in late-seventeenth century Scotland.
The Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, also sponsored by Overland, was awarded to Claire Aman for her piece “Who Rattles the Night?” The judges, Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh, reviewed more than 500 entries and chose a winner and two runners-up. The winning entry will be published in Overland and the runners-up will have their stories published online.
The Sidney Hillman Foundation was founded in 1946 to award monetary prizes for journalism and to illuminate “the great issues of our time.” Hillman, who died in 1939, was president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union, a predecessor of Unite Here and Workers United (now SEIU). The foundation’s leadership includes the former presidents of both those unions. The Hillman prize in journalism has also honored a variety of authors whose writings have highlighted the need for peace, housing, medical care and employment security for all; the promotion of civil liberties; democracy; and the battle against discrimination.