The Reed Award is presented annually during the Virginia Festival of the Book, and honors writers who achieve both literary excellence and offer extraordinary insight into the South’s natural treasures and environmental challenges. This event is free and open to the public and will also be streamed online. Meet the winners and hear more about their writing and what inspires them.
The 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 online writing published by a recognized institution such as a news organization, university, or nonprofit group.
2024 Reed Award Winner: Book
Emily Strasser’s first book, “Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History,” is a deeply researched memoir tracing her journey to confront a toxic legacy of secrecy — her grandfather’s work building nuclear weapons in the atomic city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Sifting through archives and family memories, and traveling to the deserts of Nevada, and the living rooms of Hiroshima, she grapples with the far-reaching ramifications of her grandfather’s work. Along the way, she learns that during the three decades he spent building nuclear weapons, her grandfather suffered from increasingly debilitating mental illness.
Returning to Oak Ridge, Strasser confronts the widespread contamination resulting from nuclear weapons production and the government’s disregard for its impact on the environment and public health. With brilliant insight, she reveals the intersections between the culture of secrecy in her family and the institutionalized secrecy within the nuclear industry, which persists, with grave consequences, to this day.
2024 Reed Award Winner: Journalism
NPR’s David Folkenflik digs in with Mario Ariza and Miranda Green of Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action, to uncover utility giants’ influence over small newsrooms. Matrix LLC, a consulting firm working on behalf of electric utility giants Alabama Power and Florida Power & Light, funnels money to local newsrooms that push the utilities’ agendas and attack their critics. Their work highlights how cash poured into these media outlets as the utilities fought clean energy efforts — a fight they are still waging today.
The team spoke to more than a dozen former and current reporters, civil rights activists, utility employees, and environmentalists exposing a system of influence over newsrooms. They uncover how special interests are taking advantage of news outlets that face shrinking budgets and dwindling staff numbers.