California writer and activist Rebecca Solnit received the Paul Engle Prize. Presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization, the award "honors an individual who, like Paul Engle, represents a pioneering spirit in the world of literature through writing, editing, publishing, or teaching, and whose active participation in the larger issues of the day has contributed to the betterment of the world through the literary arts." The winner receives $20,000 and a work of art created by Mike Sneller with M.C. Ginsberg. Prairie Lights Bookstore was on hand to sell copies of the author's books.
Solnit was recognized for her writing and activism on issues that include feminism, environmentalism, and social change. She has written more than 20 books, including Whose Story Is This?, Call Them by Their True Names, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and a memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence.
At the awards ceremony, Solnit said she had researched Engle, the longtime director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and co-founder, with his wife, Hualing, of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. Recent scholarship has evaluated the movement in American writing during Engle's tenure at the workshop toward literature that espoused America's ethos of "rugged individualism" as a contemporaneous counter to communism. Solnit pushed back on the merit of that stance, saying it is collective action that has led to societal advances in the areas she has explored in her writing, including work to combat climate change.