The Sidney Prize Honors Long-Form Journalism

In a world where everything seems to be getting shorter—essays become op-eds, op-eds become tweets, and twitter posts get shortened even further—the Sidney Prize stands athwart the trend, honoring long-form journalism and thought. Each month, we award a $500 honorarium and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Sorel to the writer of a piece of journalism that appears in print in a newspaper or magazine. Nominations are accepted for one’s own work or for someone else’s, and may be submitted on a website (preferably with a link to the original piece) or in the mail. The winner is announced on the second Wednesday of each month.

In the midst of a busy career, physicist Sidney Perkowitz has always found time to share his passion for physics through writing, art, and other means. For his efforts to connect physics to the humanities, the American Institute of Physics has named him the 2023 winner of its Andrew Gemant Prize.

The prize, which honors the memory of the late Professor of English at Dartmouth, is administered by a Committee which includes Robert Frost ’96 as honorary chairman and Budd Schulberg ’36 as active chairman. It is intended to perpetuate in some small way the generative influence which Professor Cox exercised on hundreds of students both in and out of his classes, and the high standards of integrity and originality which he demanded both of himself and his undergraduates.

Overland has announced that Annie Zhang won the 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize for her story ‘Who Rattles the Night?’. The short story is a tale about a couple who learn to live with ghosts in their new home on unceded Wangal land. Zhang, who lives in Western Sydney, was previously a WestWords Western Sydney Emerging Writer Fellow and has published in Island and Kill Your Darlings. She will receive a first prize of $3,000, with the runners-up each receiving $700.

Each year the Society awards three prizes for outstanding writing by its members. The winner of each prize is presented with a plaque at the Society’s Triennial Council Meeting and will be featured in the Key Reporter, the General Newsletter and social media.

The Ian Black Memorial Prize is awarded in memory of the contributions to education and research in cardiology made by the late Dr Ian Black. This prize is funded by the Sydney School of Health Sciences.