Two Women Academics Win National Book Critics Circle Awards

The National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced in six categories. Two of the six winners are American women who have current ties to the academic world.

Amy Wilentz won the award in the autobiography category for her book Farewell Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti (Simon & Schuster). The book relates the author’s experiences in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. Wilentz teaches in the literary journalism program at the University of California at Irvine. She is the former Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker and a long-time contributing editor of The Nation.

Sheri Fink is the author of Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown Publishers). The book won award in the nonfiction category. It tells the story of a hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Fink’s article on the subject, published in The New York Times Magazine, won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Dr. Fink is a senior fellow with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. She holds a medical degree and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.