Since 1950 the Sidney prize has honored journalists, writers and public figures who pursue investigative journalism in service to the common good. The foundation honors the legacy of its namesake, Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America labor union – a predecessor to Unite Here and Workers United, SEIU – who worked tirelessly to build a vibrant union movement that extended beyond shop floor issues to all aspects of working people’s lives.
The Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize is an annual contest for stories about travel and adventure inspired by the idea of “the places between.” Writers are encouraged to think broadly in interpreting this theme. Judges Laura Elvery, Paige Clark and Michael Winkler have chosen eight works to advance to the final round. Subscribers to Overland can enter the competition at a special subscriber rate.
Dr Clare Jackson, a former Sidney student and Junior Research Fellow, has won one of the most prestigious prizes in historical writing for her book on royalist ideas in late-seventeenth century Scotland. She is currently Senior Tutor and Walter Grant Scott Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, where she has also curated an exhibition on domesticity in nineteenth-century Dutch art.
Art history major Sophia Jactel (B.A. ’20) won the coveted Sidney Thomas Prize for her paper, “Domesticity and Diversions: Josef Israels’ The Smoker as a Symbol of Peasant Culture in Nineteenth-Century Holland.” Sophia’s work contributed to an exhibition curated by Sally Cornelison last Fall that explored how artists depicted the home, its contents and its role in daily life.
A longtime supporter of the Sidney prize, Ron Rash, was awarded the 2022 Sidney Lanier Prize by Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Center for Southern Studies. The prize is named after 19th-century Southern poet Sidney Lanier and recognizes exemplary writing about the region.
Founded in 1946, the Sidney Prize is named for the founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of American, a predecessor to Unite Here and Workers Union, SEIU. In the decades after its founding, the Hillman Foundation established a number of other awards in addition to the monthly Sidney Prize. These include the Hillman Prize for Journalism in the U.S and Canada, as well as the Iwanter Prize for outstanding undergraduate scholarship in humanities subjects.
The Sidney prize is a prestigious annual award for writing that illuminates the great issues of our day, from the search for a basis for lasting peace to the struggle for decent housing and health care and job security, civil liberties and democracy, and the fight against discrimination on the basis of race, nationality or religion. The prize is awarded by a jury selected from a pool of distinguished individuals. Winners are announced at an annual ceremony in New York City. The prize carries a cash prize of $5,000. Previous winners have included journalist Murray Kempton and playwright Tennessee Williams. The foundation has also established the Iwanter Prize for outstanding undergraduate scholarship, which carries a $2,000 award.
