Winners
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones
The PEN/Nora Magid Award, established in 1993, honors a magazine editor whose high literary standards and taste have, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits. Candidates for the biennial $2,500 award include current editors-in-chief, literary editors, and “back-of-the-book” editors of serious general interest magazines, book reviews, or literary reviews and quarterlies, whose intellectual discernment and wide range of interests recall the late PEN member Nora Magid, who was for many years the literary editor of The Reporter. The award is made possible by a grant from PEN member Gerald Weales.
2013 Judges
Jin Auh, Robin Desser, and Anna Holmes
From the Judges’ Citation
We are thrilled to announce that the 2013 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing will be shared by Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein of Mother Jones Magazine. With its sharp, compelling blend of investigative long-form journalism, eye-catching infographics and unapologetically confident voice, Mother Jones under Jeffery and Bauerlein has been transformed from what was a respected—if under-the-radar—indie publication to an internationally recognized, powerhouse general-interest periodical influencing everything from the gun-control debate to Presidential campaigns. In addition to their success on the print side, Jeffery and Bauerlein’s relentless attention to detail, boundless curiosity and embrace of complex subjects are also reflected on the magazine’s increasingly influential website, whose writers and reporters often put more well-known and deep-pocketed news divisions to shame. Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein have taken the tagline of Mother Jones—“Smart, Fearless, Journalism”—and made it not only a mission statement but a challenge, a challenge that any editor or writer committed to scrupulous reporting and compelling storytelling could do well to learn from.
Previous Winners
Peter Stitt (The Gettysburg Review), Herbert Liebowitz (Parnassus), Wendy Lesser (The Threepenny Review), Stanley W. Lindberg (The Georgia Review), Askold Melnyczuk (Agni), Robert Fogarty (Antioch Review), Willard Spiegelman (The Southwest Review), Bradford Morrow (Conjunctions), Hannah Tinti (One Story), and Brigid Hughes (A Public Space)