In an age where the news cycle never stops and everything gets squished down to 140 characters, the Sidney Prize stands athwart technology, yelling stop. Each year, the prize honors some of the best examples of long-form writing—essays, op-eds, and even books—that address important questions about the way we live our lives. Winners have ranged from political cartoonists to historians, a New York Times columnist to an author of a bestseller about a cult television show. They have included a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a former president of the American Physical Society, and a professor of sociology who studies the effects of religion on modern societies.
The prestigious prize is named in memory of the founder of Dexter Chemical Corporation and a longtime member of SHOT. The Sidney prize recognizes an outstanding book on a topic related to the history of technology that is published for non-specialist as well as scholarly audiences. The prize is funded by a gift from Ruth Edelstein Barish in honor of her husband, Sidney Edelstein.
Since 1596, Sidney has produced soldiers, diplomats and religious leaders, but it’s also given the world alchemists, spies, murderers, archers and ghosts. It has made film directors, opera singers, Premiership football club chairmen and, so they say, the world’s first Sherlock Holmes. It has also produced journalists, poets and novelists, philosophers and economists, political commentators and bestselling authors, and many of England’s most brilliant scientists.
In September, journalist Sam Stein won a Sidney Award for exposing how sequestration is crippling federal agencies, destroying jobs and slashing social programs and medical research. She doggedly found ways to tell the story when states stalled data requests or quoted outrageous fees for information. Her work, which was picked up by Grist and The Washington Post, has saved lives and changed policy.
This year’s prize was awarded to physicist and author Sidney Perkowitz for his work connecting art, the media and literature to science. His writings have inspired a generation of young people and helped the public understand the beauty, complexity and importance of science.
The Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, which is open to writers of all ages, has a prize pool worth more than $160,000, with the winning writer receiving $60,000 and two runners-up, taking home $30,000 each. The shortlist was chosen by judges Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh, who reviewed more than 500 entries. The winning entry will be published in Overland, and the two runners-up will receive publication in online editions of the magazine. Subscribers to Overland are eligible to enter the prize at a special discounted rate. The submission window closes on February 15.