Arts & Culture | November 15, 2016

Writers Dick Friedman, Spencer Lenfield, and illustrator Brad Yeo honored

Honoring two exceptional authors and one artist

From The January-February 2016 Issue

We take great pleasure in saluting three outstanding contributors to Harvard Magazine for their work on readers’ behalf in 2015, and happily confer on each a $1,000 honorarium.

Spencer Lenfield

A former Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow at this magazine, Spencer Lenfield ’12 wrote superb articles throughout and after his College studies. Now, it is more than fitting to salute him for “Line by Line,” his pitch-perfect portrait of poet and translator David Ferry, Ph.D. ’55 (May-June, page 52), and his profile of publisher Adam Freudenheim (November-December, page 72)—both written as Lenfield completed his studies in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar during the past academic year. We’re delighted to award him the McCord Writing Prize (honoring the legendary prose and verse that David T.W. McCord ’21, A.M. ’22, L.H.D. ’56, composed for these pages and for the Harvard College Fund), and look forward to his next feature in these pages.

Dick Friedman

Dick Friedman ’73, a Sports Illustrated veteran, has covered the past two exciting Crimson football campaigns in vivid deadline accounts enlivened with historical context, humor, and pinpoint prose (see page 37). This year, he upped his game in “Murphy Time,” his penetrating November-December cover story about the coach who has become an exemplary recruiter, tactician, and teacher for hundreds of students. We celebrate Friedman’s many contributions with the Smith-Weld Prize (in memory of A. Calvert Smith ’14, a former secretary to the Governing Boards and executive assistant to President James Bryant Conant, and of Philip S. Weld ’36, a former president of the magazine), which honors thought-provoking writing about Harvard.

Brad Yeo

Illustrator Brad Yeo perfectly captured America’s crumbling infrastructure—and the political underpinnings of the problem—in his imaginative, finely detailed cover for the July-August issue, accompanying Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s essay on the subject. We thank and recognize Yeo for his eye-catching conception and expert execution, the twin underpinnings of the illustrator’s art and craft.

~The Editors

Published in the January-February 2016 print issue under the headline “Congratulations, Contributors,” in the Letters section.

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