Pell Center Prize

Launched in 2013, the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square is an award is given each year to a storyteller whose work contributes to public understanding on important issues.

2018 Winner | Dan Barry

Dan Barry is a longtime reporter and columnist at The New York Times, having written both the “This Land” and “About New York” columns. The author of several books, he writes on myriad topics, including sports, culture, New York City, and the nation. He previously worked at The Providence Journal, where, as a member of its investigative team, he shared a George Polk Award in 1992, for a series on the causes of a state banking crisis, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for an investigation into Rhode Island’s court system.

2017 Winner | Daphne Matziaraki

Daphne Matziaraki is an Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary film director. She was born in Athens, Greece and is currently based in Berkeley, California. She lived in Kenya between 2004-2006. You can watch her award-winning documentary 4.1 Miles here: https://nyti.ms/2kq8Cib

2016 Winner | Javier Manzano

Javier Manzano, whose career has taken him to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Nigeria is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and documentary filmmaker. Manzano won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his photo, distributed through Agence France-Presse, of Syrian rebel soldiers guarding their position as light streams through bullet holes in a wall. Among his 12 other awards are two World Press Photo Awards, in 2010 and 2013, and the 2013 Bayeux-Calvados Award for war correspondents.

2015 Winner | Lisa Genova

Lisa Genova is on a mission. The Harvard-trained neuroscientist and author of four best-selling novels, including Still Alice and the recently published Inside the O’Briens, wants to use the books she writes to change lives, end stigma, and create a world where we can talk about survivors of Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases and conditions.

2014 Winner | Danny Strong

Emmy-winning screenwriter, producer and actor Danny Strong received the second annual Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. Strong — whose screenwriting credits include Recount, Game Change, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and Mockingjay, the two-part Hunger Games finale — examines inequality, racism, politics and other pressing themes of our time in his work.

2013 Winner | Dana Priest

Dana Priest, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the Washington Post, was named the inaugural winner of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. Priest was honored for her lifetime of work, with special focus on her reporting—along with colleagues Anne Hull and Michel du Cille–on deplorable conditions at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007.