Newsmakers

TAYLOR BRANCH *70 recently was awarded the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association’s Legacy Award for his contributions to American arts and letters through his works, which include America in the King Years, a trilogy of civil rights-era history.

LADEE HUBBARD ’93 received a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for her book, The Talented Tenth, which will be released in 2017. Hubbard’s debut novel features the Ribkins family, each member of which has a singular talent, such as night vision, lock picking, and the ability to remember intricate details. The award comes with a $30,000 prize and is given annually to six women writers who demonstrate excellence.

ROBERT A. CARO ’57, best known for his 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York and a multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson, will be awarded the 2016 medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation at its Nov. 16 gala. HEATHER ANN THOMPSON *95 will also be present, as a finalist for a National Book Award for her nonfiction narrative Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.