The sidney prize is a monthly award from the Hillman Foundation that recognizes outstanding socially-conscious journalism that fosters social and economic justice. The prize is named for the vision of Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations who worked tirelessly for a better America and a progressive industrial democracy. Since his death in 1946, the Hillman Foundation has carried on his legacy by honoring journalists whose work illuminates issues important to working people.
As the sidney prize has evolved, it’s moved from being a newspaper article to an essay. But it has never been more necessary to recognize the work of writers who understand how to write long-form and make their points in a succinct way. In this age of Twitter, where everything must be a tweet, the sidney prize stands athwart technology, yelling stop. This year, we’ve honored two essays and one book that have taken the prize for the most important writing of our times.
We’ve also given a sidney to an incredible piece of work by Helen Andrews, who wrote a brilliant piece about online viciousness in First Things. It isn’t easy to capture the nastiness that can lurk in an argument, but Andrews did it with such skill that we were all left stunned and more convinced than ever that we live in dangerous times.
The nastiness of the internet is just one reason why we gave a sidney to George Packer’s superb profile of Angela Merkel. The story, which ran in The New Yorker, depicts a leader who is not the romantic visionary but the meticulous, practical plodder that we need to tackle global challenges.
This year’s runner-up in the Neilma Sidney short story competition is Annie Zhang for her tale “Who Rattles the Night?”. A writer and editor living on unceded Wangal land, Zhang is a former Overland editorial fellow. Her work has appeared in Island, Kill Your Darlings and the Big Issue. She is also a former WestWords Emerging Literary Fellowship recipient.
We’ve also honored Nazanin Boniadi with the 2024 Sydney Peace Prize. The Sydney Peace Foundation awarded the prize to her “for building a powerful movement for racial equality and courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism.”
Finally, we’ve honored a book that is more than a book – it’s a record of the way an author combines research, imagination, and passion in their craft. The Iwanter prize is made possible by a gift from UW-Madison alumnus Sidney E. Iwanter (B.A. ’71, History). His own curiosity and desire to document the knowledge of his generation led him to secretly record Harvey Goldberg’s lectures on American history; these are now available in our collection of Bootlegs. In addition to the three winning books, this year’s committee also designated a number of Notable Books. A list of these is published at the same time as the winners are announced.
