2023 Winner: Dr. Ruha Benjamin
With great excitement, the Stowe Center announces the 2023 Stowe Prize Winner: Dr. Ruha Benjamin for her book Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. “I feel incredibly honored and humbled that Viral Justice has been awarded the 2023 Stowe Prize,” Dr. Benjamin writes.
Ruha Benjamin is an internationally recognized writer, speaker, and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Crow Code and editor of Captivating Technology, among many other publications. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Root, and The Guardian.
The Stowe Prize for Literary Activism recognizes the author of a distinguished book of general adult fiction or nonfiction whose written work illuminates a critical social justice issue in the tradition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The winning book applies informed inquiry, is accessible and engaging to a wide audience, and promotes empathy and understanding. In creating this award, the Stowe Center recognizes the power of literary activism.
Jeanna Grimes Ogbar, Co-Chair
Dr. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Co-Chair
Peter Little
Carolyn Treiss
Shannon Wegele
LEGACY SPONSOR
SILVER SPONSORS
Anonymous
Bartlett Brainard Eacott Inc.
BRONZE SPONSORS
Becky Latimer & Alan Kreczko
Anne Stanback and Charlotte Kinlock
Katherine D. Kane & John Kelsey
CIRCLE OF FRIENDS SPONSOR
Dr. Anne S. Agee
Barnes Group
Crosskey Architects
“This is an openhearted, multilayered work that vibrates with ideas on ways to make a new world out of the interlocking crises of COVID-19 and racial capitalism. Progress may be a ‘tear-soaked mirage,’ as Benjamin writes, yet her book is far from devoid of a sense of humor or hope, full of ways to ‘live poetically’ while remaking the systems that have failed us.”
