Press Release | February 24, 2022
Alexis Okeowo will be joining climate author Michael Mann at a ceremony in Charlottesville, Virginia, on March 18th.
CHARLOTTESVILLE – The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), today announced the winners for its 2022 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award. This year’s winners bring to light the healthcare crisis in rural Alabama caused by neglect of sewage infrastructure.
Catherine Coleman Flowers won the Reed Award in the book category. Waste: One Woman Fights Against America’s Dirty Secret. Alexis Okeowo received the Reed Award in the journalism category for The Black Belts Wastewater Crisis: The Heavy TollPublished by The New Yorker.
The Reed Award honors writers who are both exceptional in writing and provide extraordinary insight into South’s natural treasures, and environmental challenges. The Reed Award is presented each year to recognize outstanding writing on the Southern Environment in two categories: the Book Category (not self-published) for nonfiction works and the Journalism Category (newspaper, magazine, or online writing published by a recognized institution like a university, news organization, or nonprofit group).
During the ceremony, a celebration will be held in the honor of the winners. Virginias Festival of the BookThis year’s featured speaker will be Michael Mann, an American geophysicist and climatologist, at 4 p.m. March 18, 2022. His most recent book is called “Michael Mann’s Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University”. The New Climate WarThis book discusses how fossil fuel companies have waged an ongoing campaign for over 30 years to delay, deflect blame and delay action on climate. It also offers a battle plan for how the planet can be saved. This event is open to all and is free of charge. It will be held in the CODE Building located at 225 West Water Street Charlottesville’s downtown Mall. The Reed Award presentation can be broadcast online for those who cannot attend in person. You can register for both the online and in-person event using this link.
This Years Book Award Winner: Catherine Coleman Flowers
Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called Bloody Lowndes because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers’s life’s work. It’s a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Many people, particularly the poorest in rural areas, lack affordable ways to dispose of waste from their toilets. They live in sewage.
Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In WasteShe shares her inspiring story about her journey as an activist from country girl to student civil right organizer to environmental justice champion, MacArthur Fellow, and back again. This shows how sanitation is becoming a major problem that we cannot ignore, as climate change brings sewage into more backyards and not just those of poor minorities.
Alexis Okeowo won the Journalism Award for this year
Okeowo is a staff author at The New YorkerWho has reported on conflict and human rights in Africa as well as Mexico and the American South. In The Black Belts Wastewater Crisis: The Heavy TollFor The New YorkerOkeowo discusses the fact many rural American households don’t have access to safe sewage system. Their piece is about Alabama communities that are enslaved in poverty and live in an area of unusual geology, which has led to a public health crisis.
About the Reed Award
SELC created the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 1994 to enhance public awareness of the value and vulnerability of the Souths natural treasures and to recognize and encourage the writers who most effectively tell the stories about the regions environment. The award is named for SELC founding trustee Phil Reed, a talented attorney and committed environmental leader who believed deeply in the power of writing to change hearts and minds.
The Reed Award winners were selected by a distinguished panel and include Paul Bolster author Saving the Georgia Coast: A Political History Of The Coastal Marshlands Protection Tony Bartelme, Act! The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, for his detailed reporting on South Carolina’s coast environment; Margaret Renkl (author of Late Migrations: A Natural History Of Love and LossMegan Mayhew Bergman was awarded the award in Journalism Category for Climate Changed. This series examines southern attitudes towards climate change and was published by The Guardian; Earl Swift, author Chesapeake Requiem, A Year with The Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island Edward O. Wilson is the father of biodiversity. Janisse Ray, a writer and naturalist, has been inducted into Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Deborah Cramer, scientist writer, has received honors from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Drew Lanham, author The Home Place: Memoirs a Colored ManA Love Affair with Nature