Best magazine reporting from abroad
AWARD YEAR: 1981
AWARD NAME: The Mary Hemingway Award
AWARD RECIPIENT: Lawrence Wechsler
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: The New Yorker
AWARD HONORED WORK: “A Reporter in Poland”
Wechsler’s two-part series, “A Reporter in Poland,” combines a felicitous literary style with formidable reporting in depth. In a reportorial tour de force running from May through the fall of 1981, Wechsler takes his readers backstage with Solidarity, with the Polish people, and with the Communist party. He describes how Poland’s location, between East and West, has led to a history of occupation, domination, bloodshed recurrent tragedy, and how nationalism and Roman Catholicism, as in the past, have enabled Poland to survive the bleak days of critical shortages and martial law.
A Citation for Excellence was awarded to Shirley Christian for “Freedom and Unfreedom in Nicaragua,” in The New Republic.
Judges: Morton Frank, William Arthur, Alfred Balk, William Bundy, Stanley Swinton.