The Sidney Prize was an annual award presented by a private foundation for outstanding journalism or public service. The Foundation has awarded tens of thousands of dollars in monetary prizes since its founding in 1946. Its board of trustees includes left-leaning labor leaders like Workers United and SEIU President emeritus Bruce Raynor and celebrities such as Danny Glover.
In the early years, the foundation primarily awarded a few hundred awards per year, with most of the prizes ranging from $500 to $2,000. More recently, it has expanded its reach to include more than 500 awards and grants. The Foundation also awards a few prizes for academic achievement in particular units or programs of study. Students are nominated by their faculty, and if they win a Sydney Prize the award is recorded on their transcript. Literary prizes also require an application and submission of written work.
In announcing the 2024 winners, the Selection Committee noted that it had received many books for teens, geared for 7th grade and above, that did not fit into either of the two previous categories: Younger Readers or Older Readers. To address this, the Committee established the Association of Jewish Libraries Teen Book Award in January 2007. Titles selected as a winner in this category receive the Sydney Taylor Seal and will be labeled as such at AJL. The other categories remained unchanged.
Sophia Jactel (B.A. ’20) has won this year’s Sidney Thomas Prize for the best art history paper by an undergraduate student. Her paper, “Domesticity and Diversions: Josef Israels’ The Smoker as a Symbol of Peasant Culture and the Role of Home in Nineteenth-Century Holland,” was based on research done for her senior art history major project under the direction of Professor Sally Cornelison.
The Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, sponsored by Overland, seeks moving and powerful short fiction themed loosely around the notion of travel. The first place winner will receive a cash prize of $5000 and publication in Overland, while the two runners-up will each be awarded $750 and have their stories published online alongside the print edition.
In announcing the 2024 winners, this year’s Selection Committee noted that they had received many books for teens, geared to 7th grade and above, that did not seem to fit into either of the two previous categories: “Older Readers” or “Picture Books.” To address this, the committee established the Association of Jewish Libraries Teen Book Award (formerly the Sidney Taylor Book Award for Younger Readers). Titles selected as a winner in this new category receive the Sydney Taylor Seal and will be noted as such at AJL. The other two categories remained unchanged. In addition, the Committee began selecting Honor Books in the Younger Readers category to recognize excellent nonfiction titles geared for this age group. Honor Books are labeled with a silver seal and winning titles with a gold seal. You can find all of the 2024 Sydney Taylor Seal winners and other information on AJL’s seal page.