Thomas Kunkel’s elegant profile of journalist Joseph Mitchell has been awarded the 2016 Ann M. Sperber Prize by Fordham University.
The Sperber Prize is given in honor of Ann M. Sperber, the author of the critically acclaimed biography of Edward R. Murrow, titled, Murrow: His Life and Times. Through the generous support of Ann’s mother Lisette, the $1,000 prize was established to promote and encourage other biographical works that focus on a media professional, and has been presented annually by Fordham University’s Department of Communication and Media Studies since 1999.
Brian Rose, Ph.D., professor of communications and director of the Sperber Prizes, praised Man in Profile as “an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary writer whose poetic insights and graceful style revolutionized literary journalism in America.” The book was published by Random House.
Thomas Kunkel is the president of St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. He is the author of Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker (1995) and Enormous Prayers: A Journey into the Priesthood (1998).
Previous winners of the Ann M. Sperber Prize include Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow, Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley, Lives of Margaret Fuller by John Matteson, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century by Alan Brinkley, and American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone by D.D. Guttenplan.
A ceremony featuring the author will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 5 p.m. in the Corrigan Conference Center, 12th floor, Lowenstein Center on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. For more information, please contact Brian Rose at rose@fordham.edu or 212.636.6277
