2024 Silvers-Dudley Prize Winners
2023 Silvers-Dudley Prize Winners
Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism
Marina Warner
Marina Warner is Professor of Creative Writing and English at Birbeck College, University of London. Her groundbreaking study of the cult of the Virgin Mary, Alone of All Her Sex, is a touchstone in the scholarship of female deities. “Warner brings her subjects to life with vividness and psychoanalytic acuity,” our judges noted, “She delves into the hidden codes of folklore with an appreciation of enduring (and mischievous) human ambivalence.” Warner is also a writer of fiction and memoir, and her literary reviews are published widely, including in the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, The New Statesman, Vogue, and London Review of Books.
Jennifer Wilson
Jennifer Wilson is a contributing writer at The New Yorker. Previously, she was a contributing essayist at The New York Times Book Review. “A prolific and penetrating critic, Wilson has published essays on subjects ranging from the fiction of Jesmyn Ward to Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and Alexander Pushkin,” the judges noted. “She combines an academic rigor and depth of knowledge with a clear, forceful, and elegant style, and has been particularly illuminating on the Russian literary tradition.” In 2023, she received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures.
Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writing
Svetlana Alpers
Svetlana Alpers is Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley and currently Visiting Scholar in Art History at New York University. “Alpers teaches us that artists like Vermeer and Rembrandt are akin to scientists in their observations and empirical experiments,” our judges wrote. “She urges viewers in turn to trust our eyes—that is, to trust surfaces—when we look for meanings in artworks. Her prose is equal to the paintings she describes in sensuality and tactility, rich in historical detail and redolent as a fresh oil canvas.” Her published works include The Art of Describing, Rembrandt’s Enterprise, Roof Life, Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch, and a forthcoming collection of selected writings titled Is Art History?
Harmony Holiday
Harmony Holiday, a writer, dancer, archivist, filmmaker, is the author of five collections of poetry, including Hollywood Forever and Maafa (2022), and a staff writer for LA Times’ Image and 4Columns. Our judges wrote that “Holiday’s deep engagement with the cultural history of Black America sets her apart. Her work exists at the intersection of criticism, poetry and contemporary art, affording us new insights into the affective structure of Black creative life, and new lines of flight from its entrapment in the categories and evaluations of the past.” Ms. Holiday is currently working on a collection of essays for Duke University Press, a biography of Abbey Lincoln, and an exhibition on backstage and performance culture for The Kitchen in New York.
Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism
Fintan O’Toole
Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with The Irish Times and advising editor of The New York Review of Books. He has previously been awarded both the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize. “Fintan O’Toole’s writing is characterized by incisive political commentary and wry, sometimes acerbic humor,” our judges wrote. “It is backed by serious cultural and historical scholarship and a profound understanding of human foibles and frailties.” His most recent book is We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. He is currently working on the official biography of Seamus Heaney.
Krithika Varagur
Krithika Varagur is a journalist and the author of The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project. She spent several years as a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia before moving to New York, and contributes to various publications including Harper’s, the London Review of Books, and The New Yorker. Her journalism struck the judges for the way in which “it combined an unerring eye for narrative, scene, and character, with relentlessly rigorous research and reporting, and a keen understanding of larger social and political dynamics.” She has been an editor at The Drift since it launched in 2020. She is writing a book, for Penguin Press/Viking UK, about three Punjabi princesses who lived in Victorian England.