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The judging panel for the 2024 Neilma Sidney Prize has reviewed more than 500 entries and chosen two runners-up to be published alongside the winning essay in Overland’s autumn issue. The first place winner will receive $5000 in prize money and the two runners-up will each be awarded $750. The winning entry will also spend a day in Overland’s newsroom with senior editors to discuss the piece’s craft and to learn more about our publication.
Each year New York Times columnist David Brooks gives out Sidney Awards to honor the best long-form essays on politics and culture. He’s given them to writers in the upper echelons of publishing, like Hilton Als writing for The New Yorker or Ed Yong writing for The Atlantic.
In a less arbitrary world, many more essays would earn Sidneys. Malcolm Gladwell’s pieces in The New Yorker, for example, tend to get panned by the envious herd, but I would nominate his “Offensive Play,” on the lingering effects of football violence, as an excellent Sidney candidate.
The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District recently named Union Grove Middle School student Macey Bosard as one of the winners of its annual Essay Contest. The essay competition is designed to encourage metro students to write about the environmental and economic impacts of extreme droughts and flooding. Students are challenged to research the last major flood or drought in their county and region, and then create a report on how it has affected local communities and businesses.
Students are asked to present their research findings in a paper that includes a bibliography. Students are also encouraged to choose a subject they feel passionate about and focus their essay on that topic. The essay is not to exceed 10 pages in length.
Each year, the Daughters of the American Revolution host a local essay contest to give local students an opportunity to compete against other DAR chapters across the state and country. The local chapter at Fort Sidney sponsors the contest in partnership with the national DAR committee that declares a nationwide American History essay topic and sets specific requirements for fifth- through eighth-graders to follow.
The winners of the 2019 Mercer University Sidney Lanier Prize for Appalachian Studies will be announced April 18. Ron Rash, Western Carolina University John Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies, has been awarded the 2020 prize by Mercer’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies. This is the fourth time Rash has been honored with this prestigious award, which recognizes writers who engage and extend the tradition of writing about the American South. The prize is named after the 19th-century American poet and novelist Sidney Lanier, who was born in Macon, Georgia. The prize is a part of the Center’s scholarship program in memory of former faculty members Robert and A. B. Guthrie and Budd Schulberg ’36. The prize is administered by a board of directors, of which Schulberg is an honorary chair and Guthrie is active chairman.