Submissions are open for the 2020 Richard J. Margolis Award. Established in the memory of journalist, essayist, and poet Richard J. Margolis, the annual prize awards $5,000 and a one-month residency at Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, to a journalist or essayist whose work “combines warmth, humor, and wisdom and sheds light on issues of social justice.”
Submit a cover letter, a project description that includes details of current and anticipated work, a short bio, and two to three writing samples totaling no more than thirty pages by July 1. There is no entry fee. The winner will be announced in November, with the Blue Mountain Center residency to take place in summer or fall 2021. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Over the course of his career, Richard J. Margolis worked as a writer, educator, editor, and activist. He wrote widely on education, healthcare, poverty, rural America, and racial justice, among other topics, and his articles appeared regularly in such publications as the New York Times and Washington Post. His friends and family founded the Richard J. Margolis Award in 1992, a year after he died due to sudden heart failure at age sixty-one. The award’s most recent winner is memoirist Mansoor Adayfi, who received the honor for work that turns his “fourteen-plus years of captivity at Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp into compelling narratives of human connection and hope.”