The Sidney Prize is a literary award established to commemorate playwright Sidney Sheldon who died at 48 in 1939. Established by Playwrights’ Company and awarded annually, it recognizes promising new plays while in past years other forms of theater also showed promise were honored with it.
Ron Rash, an author and professor of English at Western Carolina University, received the 2020 Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature from Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Center for Appalachian Studies. This is just the latest of numerous accolades bestowed upon Ron since publishing four collections of poems and six collections of short stories over his distinguished career.
Hillman Foundation was established in 1946, as a left-leaning organization. Each year it awards monetary prizes to journalists and others who advocate for social justice. Funded predominantly through contributions from labor unions, its board of directors includes several leaders from Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Unite Here and Workers United (formerly SEIU), as well as left-leaning celebrities like Danny Glover.
In addition to the Hillman Prize, the foundation gives out monthly Sidney Prizes for journalism that exposes “social and economic injustices in service of the common good.” In the United States, ProPublica administers this prize while Canada has their Canadian Centre for Investigative Journalism managing it – both committees review applicants for both awards, which feature former CBC journalist Maryam Sa’ad among their judges.
Overland magazine announced Annie Zhang as the winner of its 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize with her story ‘Who Rattles the Night? ‘, selected along with two other entries. Set in an unceded Wangal house and exploring life with ghosts, Annie won $5,000 along with publication in print issue and online publications of Overland Magazine; runners-up madeleine Rebbechi for “A Map of Underneath” and Sheila Ngoc Pham for ‘Whack-a-Mole”. Click here for full shortlist –