We’re excited to announce that the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice has released a list of six titles shortlisted for this year’s inaugural award. The shortlisted works are:
- Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo (Random House)
- Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn (The New Press)
- How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France (A.A. Knopf)
- Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves (Brookings Institute Press)
- No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America by Ron Powers (Hachette)
The Book Prize will be awarded by a panel of prominent scholars, writers and journalists including Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner; Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker staff writer and CNN legal analyst; Barbara Simon, associate professor at the Columbia School of Social Work; Douglas Bauer, executive director of The Clark Foundation; and Michael Zisser, recently retired CEO of University Settlement and The Door.
The prize is named after former Goddard Riverside Executive Director Stephan Russo. It celebrates the power of the written word to create change in the name of justice for all peopleÑa value shared by our longtime supporters in the publishing community.
The winner will be announced at Goddard Riverside’s annual gala on November 1 at Cipriani 42nd Street. The gala will honor David Cully, the president of Baker & Taylor, a Follett Company. Baker & Taylor is a leading distributor of digital content and entertainment products in more than 120 countries and a longtime supporter of Goddard Riverside.
A special presentation will also be made to author Mary Higgins Clark for her philanthropy. The author of 51 international bestsellers, Clark is a supporter of Goddard Riverside and is well known for her generosity toward worthy institutions and causes.