Williamstown Author Wins Literature Prize
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A Williams College fellow has won the 2017 Blake-Dodd Prize in Literature.
Elizabeth Kolbert is a local resident and the Class of 1946 Environmental Fellow-in-Residence at Williams College. She won the $25,000 prize, one of 12 prizes totalling $265,000 awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Academy's 250 members propose candidates, and a rotating committee of writers selects winners. This year's award committee members were John Guare (chairman), Thomas McGuane, Anne Tyler, Rosanna Warren, and Joy Williams.
Kolbert will receive the prize in New York City at the Academy's annual ceremonial in May.
Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. Prior to that, she was a reporter for The New York Times. She is the author of "Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change." Her series on global warming, "The Climate of Man," from which the book was adapted, won the American Association for the Advancement of Science's magazine writing award and a National Academies communications award. She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner. She is also a recipient of a Heinz Award and Guggenheim Fellowship.
Kolbert lives in Williamstown. She joined the faculty at Williams in 2015.
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