Reed Environmental Writing Award announces 2025 call for nominations

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Aug 01, 2024, 10:00 ET

The annual awards program by the Southern Environmental Law Center honors extraordinary environmental writers focused on the South

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Aug. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) announced a call for entries to the 2025 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award program. The Reed Award celebrates writers who achieve both literary excellence and offer extraordinary insight into the South's natural treasures and environmental challenges.

Each year, two awards are presented to recognize outstanding writing in the following areas:

SELC created the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 1994 to enhance public awareness of the value and vulnerability of the South’s natural treasures and to recognize and encourage the writers who most effectively tell the stories about the region’s environment.

Book Category for works of nonfiction (not self-published)
Journalism Category for newspaper, magazine, and digital writing published by a recognized institution such as a news organization, university, or nonprofit group

Nominations are welcome from anyone, including readers, authors, and publishers.

In the long, proud tradition of Southern literature, writers 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. 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.

Recent winners include:

Emily Strasser, author of Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History.
David Folkenflik of NPR, Mario Ariza and Miranda Green of Floodlight, for their article, "In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics", published by NPR.
Corban Addison, author of Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial.
Isabelle Chapman, investigative reporter for CNN for her article "Gambling 'America's Amazon'".
Alexis Okeowo, staff writer at The New Yorker for their article "The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt's Wastewater Crisis".
Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature.

There are three options for submitting entries: electronic copy (up to 64MB), hard copy, or a website link to where the submission is available for sale. Hard copy submissions will not be returned. Below are the general contest requirements.

All submissions must have been published between October 1, 2023, and
September 30, 2024.
All 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 by October 1, 2024, at https://www.southernenvironment.org/2024-reed-environmental-writing-award-nominations/
Journalism entries must be at least 1,000 words and may consist of a single article or a group of articles.

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.

An award ceremony honoring the 2025 winners will be held in person on March 21 in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a part of the Virginia Festival of the Book. The event will also be streamed live online.

About Southern Environmental Law Center:

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation's most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region's air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 200, including more than 120 legal and policy experts, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. southernenvironment.org.

SOURCE Southern Environmental Law Center