Modern-day Walden writer and veteran South Carolina journalist are this year’s winners of SELC writing award

Charlottesville, VA - SELC is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. In the Book category, North Carolina writer Thomas Rain Crowe won for Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods. In the Journalism category, reporter Tony Bartelme won for his series about the Francis Marion National Forest, "Under Fire," which was published in the Post and Courier. Each will receive a $1,000 prize. In the Advocacy category for unpublished short essays, Jill Rios of western North Carolina won for "Back to the Garden: Cultivating Environmental Advocacy in the Christian South." She will receive a $250 prize.

Rain Crowe's book, Zoro's Field, is the result of his having spent four years living alone in a cabin, without electricity or plumbing, deep in the woods of western North Carolina, and clearly brings to mind the experiences of another who wrote of his time living at an isolated pond in New England in the mid-19th century. Rain Crowe, after a long absence from his native southern Appalachians, inhabits a cabin he helped build years before, on a North Carolina farm once owned by a man named Zoro Guice. The book chronicles both the internal and external world of Rain Crowe - digging a root cellar, being a good listener, gathering wood, living in the moment, tending a mountain garden - as he pursues a life of conscious simplicity, spirituality, and environmental responsibility.

Of Rain Crowe, author, journalist and Phil Reed judge Charles Seabrook says: "He writes eloquently and passionately about living off the land and learning to appreciate nature in all its glory. In the end, though, he shows how quickly nature's wonders can be lost when we forego our vigilance to protect them." Zoro's Field is published by the University of Georgia Press, which plans to issue a paperback edition this fall.

In the Journalism category, Tony Bartelme's series of stories in the Post and Courier on the ecological riches and the plight of the Francis Marion National Forest in coastal South Carolina, "Under Fire," drew praise from the Phil Reed judges: "This is superb work," (Bill McKibben) and "A great deal of research, well organized, well written." (Jan DeBlieu) The four-part series documents how the forest, one of the most unique ecosystems on the Eastern seaboard, is threatened by misguided road initiatives, land speculators, and other forces. Bartelme covered hundreds of miles by car, kayak and foot as he traveled with those who know the forest best.

The series sparked a dramatic reaction from the public and policy makers alike. Holding a copy of the newspaper in his hands, the South Carolina governor announced a plan to spend $10 million to buy timber tracts to protect them from development, and the legislature eventually approved $32 million to buy 39,000 acres of forestland. In an act of rare regional cooperation, 11 municipalities are considering a pact to protect 25,000 acres next to the Francis Marion from dense development. And dozens of readers wrote letters to the editor demanding that the forest be preserved. Earlier this year, the S.C. Press Association gave "Under Fire" a top award for public service. This type of reaction, though not a criteria of SELC's writing award, is at the heart of our goal to raise awareness and action through outstanding writing.

In the Advocacy category, Jill Rios of western North Carolina won for her unpublished short essay, "Back to the Garden: Cultivating Environmental Advocacy in the Christian South." Rios explores the relationship between Christianity and environmentalism, chastising both for isolating the other, and imploring both to recognize the millennia-old kinship between faith and the natural world. Noting the parallels between the southern environment and religion (mountain laurel blooms as Catholics observe Lent, the coming of spring heralds tent revivals and may apples), she ponders the affect on our spirit in the face of environmental degradation: "What does it mean when the rich biodiversity of this region is lost to another development whose street names honor endemic species that once existed under the paved surfaces and subdivided lots of gated communities?"

In the end, Rios shares examples of how Christians are taking steps small and large to care for the earth, from buying shade-grown coffee to drink after Sunday mass to buying wind power credits to offset the air pollution generated by major conferences. "Believing that 'Jesus saves' does not make us exempt from assuming personal and society responsibility for climate change," she writes. Nikki Giovanni, author, poet and Phil Reed judge, noted of Rios's essay: "She is raising difficult questions that must be answered for the future of the planet."

SELC is grateful to this year's judges, who volunteered their time and talent for this contest:

Emerson Blake* - Editor-in-Chief at Orion magazine
Michael Carlton - Editor of Yankee magazine
Jan DeBlieu** - Author of Wind and other books; Cape Hatteras Coastkeeper
Jim Detjen - Director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University
Wilma Dykeman - Author of The French Broad; newspaper columnist
David Gessner - Asst. Professor of English at UNC Wilmington; Author of Return of the Osprey
Nikki Giovanni - Poet, essayist; author; Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech
Will Martin - Senior Fellow at World Wildlife Fund; SELC President's Council
Bill McKibben - Visiting scholar Middlebury College; author The End of Nature and other books
Rick Montague - Vice President of SELC's Board of Trustees; author; civic leader
Janisse Ray** - Writer-in-residence Keene State College; author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Charles Seabrook - Former environmental reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Don Webster - Book author; contributing writer to National Geographic, Smithsonian

* Blake abstained from judging the Journalism category, where one of the entries was published in Orion
** DeBlieu and Ray abstained from judging the Book category; they were either mentioned in the acknowledgements or provided an endorsement for the book jacket of entries.