In New York for Overseas Press Club Awards

I took the bus from central Pennsylvania this morning to New York for the Overseas Press Club Awards. I was lucky enough to be cited in the Madeline Dane Ross Award category for best international reporting in the print medium showing a concern for the human condition for my VQR story “Hope’s Coffin,” about young Gazans living in the aftermath of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Read what VQR editor Ted Genoways has to say about the awards here.

I owe whatever success I’ve had and whatever gains I’ve made as a writer largely to Ted Genoways. He has turned VQR into a one-of-a-kind catchall for great non-fiction writing and photography, as well as criticism, poetry, and graphic art. His awards speak for themselves: VQR has repeatedly won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in recent years, and Ted just won a Guggenheim grant for his scholarship on Walt Whitman. On top of that, Jason Motlagh, a fellow UVA graduate, just won the National Magazine Award for Online Journalism for his VQR web exclusive about the 2008 Mumbai bombings, “Sixty Hours of Terror.”

I’m thrilled and honored, but mostly grateful to have had the opportunity to spend so much time in Gaza at such a critical juncture in the territory’s history, and to have benefited from the generosity, hospitality, and friendship of Gazans on so many occasions and during such trying times. I left Gaza on 12 April, having concluded my year-long assignment with CARE International. It was bittersweet, but it was time to go and I’ve got exciting things lined up for the summer. I’ll be traveling to Egypt on behalf of VQR during the month of May, and then I’ll be returning to Afghanistan in July. For now, however, it’s time to live it up in the Big Apple.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 3:16 pm. It is filed under WEB JOURNAL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.