CONTACT: Trish Anderton, Director of PR, Goddard Riverside | tanderton@goddard.org | 929-249-1449
[New York City, September 19, 2023] Every year Goddard Riverside celebrates the power of the written word to create change in the name of justice for all people. The Goddard Riverside CBC Youth Book Prize for Social Justice and Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice recognize some of the best nonfiction writing of the year for all ages.
This year’s shortlists run the gamut from hunger to housing and LGBTQ rights to aging. The winner of each prize will be announced at our annual Bash on October 4th at Monarch Rooftop.
The Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice shortlist is:
- Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System by Jeff Hobbs [Scribner]. A book that challenges any preconceived perceptions about how the juvenile justice system works—and demonstrates that no one so young should ever be considered irredeemable.
- Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond [Crown/Penguin Random House]. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.
- The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila [Scribner]. This “compelling mixture of health care policy and gripping stories from the frontlines of medicine” (The Guardian) explores the question: where does an uninsured person go when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors?
- The Measure of our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life by M. T. Connolly [PublicAffairs/Hachette]. An expert on elder justice maps the challenges of aging, how things go wrong, and presents powerful tools we can use to forge better long lives for ourselves, our families, and our communities.
- Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See by Richard D. Kahlenberg [PublicAffairs/Hachette]. An indictment of America’s housing policy that reveals the social engineering underlying our segregation by economic class, the social and political fallout that result, and what we can do about it.
The Goddard Riverside CBC Youth Book Prize for Social Justice shortlist is:
- Food for Hope: How John van Hengel Invented Food Banks for the Hungry by Jeff Gottesfeld [Creston Books]. This true story of how one ordinary person did something extraordinary shows how everyone can do something to make a difference.
- Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People by Rebecca Pitts [Triangle Square Books]. The first biography of Jane Jacobs for young people, the visionary activist, urbanist, and thinker who transformed the way we inhabit and develop our cities.
- The Mother of a Movement: Jeanne Manford–Ally, Activist, and Founder of PFLAG by Rob Sanders [Magination Press]. A true story of parental support and unconditional love — about Jeanne Manford, the founder of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)
- Holding Her Own: The Exceptional Life of Jackie Ormes by Traci N. Todd [Orchard Books]. An evocative picture book biography about the prolific life of Jackie Ormes, whose groundbreaking cartoons became some of the first empowering depictions of Black women in America.