NEWPORT — Richards Free Library and the judges of the Sarah Josepha Hale Award have announced that Jodi Picoult is the 2019 Sarah Josepha Hale Award Medalist. The award presentation will be held on Sept. 28.
Picoult is the author of 25 novels. Her most recent novel, A Spark of Light, was her 10th consecutive instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Her novels have been made into television movies and feature films. Her two young adult novels co-written with her daughter Samantha Van Leer have been adapted into a musical that is expected to appear Off-Broadway this summer.
Picoult is the recipient of the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, the Alex Award from YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association), a lifetime achievement award from the Romance Writers of America and the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit.
She is renowned for tackling controversial issues, for her research, and for her ability to explain different points of view. One of the Hale judges said “…she has a gift for enabling readers to get inside the heads of characters who are on different sides of an issue and who might at first seem repellant … Her ability to get readers to understand and respect different points of view is exactly what the country so desperately needs now.” Another judge for the Hale Award called her the “Wonder Woman of American letters.”
A graduate of Princeton, Picoult earned a Master’s Degree in education from Harvard University. She holds honorary degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of New Haven.
She lives in New Hampshire with her husband.
For more than 50 years, the http://rfltest.dreamhosters.com/sarah-josepha-hale-award/Sarah Josepha Hale Award has been given by the Trustees of the Richards Free Library in recognition of a distinguished body of written work in the field of literature and letters.
The award honors author, poet, and essayist Sarah Josepha Hale who, as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine, shaped the opinion of 19th Century American women. The list of Hale Award winners includes the finest writers of our times from Robert Frost in 1956 to Nathaniel Philbrick in 2018.
For more information about the Hale award, please contact Andrea Thorpe, Director of the Richards Free Library, Newport, N.H. at 863-3430 or [email protected]
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