In an era of short attention spans and clickbait headlines, longform journalism and thought pieces remain powerful tools for informing, challenging and stimulating readers. The Sidney Prize is a monthly award that honors outstanding journalism published online or in print, and anyone can nominate.
Winners receive a $500 honorarium and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Sorel. Nominations are due by the last day of each month.
Overland Magazine and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation have joined forces to offer the 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. This year, the first prize is worth $5000 and two runners-up will be rewarded $750 each. Entries, which should be no more than 3000 words and themed loosely around the notion of travel, will be judged by a panel including Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh. The winning entry will be published in Overland’s autumn 2024 issue and the runners-up will have their stories published online. The competition is open to writers nationally and internationally. To enter, take out a one-year subscription to Overland at the special prize subscriber rate: $62. This includes four issues of Overland, access to our daily online magazine and invitations to special subscriber events, opportunities and giveaways.
For more information, visit the Prize page.
The Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World will award a $1,000 prize annually to the Harvard Law School student writing the best paper on a topic related to the legal profession in a context of Muslim majority or minority rule. This could include (but is not limited to) papers that analyze the relationship between laws and social change, legal practice in a particular context, or the impact of globalization or other social trends upon lawyers and legal institutions.
The 2020 Sidney Prize for Southern Literature was awarded to novelist, poet and short story writer Ron Rash by the Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr Center for Southern Studies. The prize was first established in 2012 and named for Southern literature professor and renowned literary critic, Sidney Lanier. The prize is intended to promote the study of the history, culture and literature of the American South.
The Hillman Foundation, which awards the annual Sidney Awards, is a left-of-center organization founded by labor leader Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union. Its board of directors includes the leaders of Workers United and SEIU. Its president emeritus is former Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union president Bruce Raynor. The Foundation also sponsors the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes and other national journalism awards. In addition to the Sidney Awards, the Foundation gives grants to individual journalists and journalists’ organizations. The Hillman Foundation has been involved in several high-profile labor disputes, including controversies over its funding from the AFL-CIO. The Foundation has also supported many progressive political causes. The Hillman Foundation’s mission is to support journalism in service of the common good.