In its annual awards ceremony on March 8, the National Book Critics Circle honored three Harvard affiliates:
- Maya Jasanoff, professor of history, in general nonfiction for Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutioonary World (Knopf);
- Edith Pearlman ’57, a distinguished writer of short stories, in fiction for her newest collection, Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories (Lookout Books); and
- Robert B. Silvers, Litt.D. ’07, founding editor of The New York Review of Books, who received a lifetime achievement award.
Jasanoff is a member of a distinguished family of Harvard scholars. On campus, she has recently organized and moderated two Faculty of Arts and Sciences panels on the future of the faculty in light of emerging information technologies, and on the values faculty members believe must carry forward toward the University's four-hundredth anniversary.
Pearlman has enjoyed a literary following through a series of volumes of short stories, published by small and university presses. This award may help bring her to the attention of a wider readership.
During the honorary-degree portion of the Commencement exercises in 2007, Silvers was lauded with this citation: Incisive and indefatigable editor extraordinaire whose spirit infuses an indispensable journal; an estimable polymath and exacting craftsman who elevates the expression of vital ideas.
