2011 ASME Awards

April 6, 2011 1:05 PM

2011 National Magazine Awards Finalists Announced (Instapaperable list)

Direct links:

Feature Writing

The Wrong Man (David Freed, The Atlantic)
On the man wrongfully accused of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The Suicide Catcher (Michael Paterniti, GQ)
On the angel who saves jumpers on an infamous bridge in China.

The End (Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles)
Death in L.A. can be an odd undertaking.

The Mark of a Masterpiece (David Grann, New Yorker)
The man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art.

For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question
(Mac McClelland, Mother Jones)
The young men who risk life and limb to document Burma’s genocide.

Reporting

The Guantánamo “Suicides” (Scott Horton, Harper’s)
A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle.

Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?
(Robert F. Worth, NYT Magazine)

Covert Operations (Jane Mayer, New Yorker)
The billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama

The Runaway General (Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone)
The profile that got Stanley McChrystal fired

Digging Out (Elliot D. Woods, VQR)
Afghans’ best hope for their future might be right under their feet.

Profile Writing

Autism’s First Child
(John Donvan and Caren Zucker, The Atlantic)
The long, happy, surprising life of the first person diagnosed with autism.

Joan Rivers Always Knew She Was Funny
(Jonathan Van Meter, New York)

The Man the White House Wakes Up To
(Mark Leibovich, NYT Magazine)
On Politico’s Mike Allen.

The Unconsoled (George Packer, New Yorker)
On Israeli writer David Grossman.

“God Help You, You’re on Dialysis”
(Robin Fields, ProPublica)
Why do one in four people on dialysis die?

Letting Go (Atul Gawande, New Yorker)
What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?

What’s the Catch? (Bruce Barcott, On Earth)
Sustainable fishing in the Bering Sea.

Innocence Lost (Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly)
The story of Anthony Graves, an innocent man behind bars for nearly 20 years.

Innocence Found (Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly)
How Anthony Graves found freedom.

Essays, Criticism, Personal Service

Solitude and Leadership
(William Deresiewicz, The American Scholar)

Lust, Devotion, & the Binary Code
(Kamin Mohammadi, VQR)

The (Surprising) Truth About Salt
(Rachel Moeller Gorman, Good Housekeeping)

The Blood Test Gets a Makeover (Steven Leckart, Wired)

posted by AceRock (8 comments total)

VQR has consistently amazed me with the subject and depth of their reporting, good for them I hope they win.
posted by Homeskillet Freshy Fresh at 1:12 PM on April 6, 2011

"Letting Go" by Atul Gawande is one of the best pieces of magazine writing I've ever read. Ever. (My doctor friends tended to find it trite though.)

On the other hand, I thought George Packer's David Grossman piece was a bore.
posted by eugenen at 1:53 PM on April 6, 2011

The full list of nominees (not just the ones longform.org linked to) is available here. There are more categories than the ones listed here, as well as nominated stories that were either not available online or inexplicably left out of the list (see Laurence Roy Stains's I Want My Prostate Back from Men's Health, another nominee in the "Personal Service" category).
posted by rhymeswithaj at 2:09 PM on April 6, 2011

Garden & Gun is a finalist in "lifestyle." I was fully prepared for it to be a special edition of The Onion. But it's not.
posted by memewit at 2:16 PM on April 6, 2011

memewit, Garden & Gun is one of the magazines they keep in the rooms at the B&B my husband and I like to stay at in my hometown. It's for real, and also a running gag at our house.
posted by immlass at 2:42 PM on April 6, 2011

Years ago I was surprised to learn that Texas Monthly does fantastic in-depth feature reporting. I once killed a Sunday going through their archives of pieces recognized for National Magazine Awards.
posted by lalex at 3:43 PM on April 6, 2011

My wife and I have neither a garden nor a gun, but we love that magazine! It's really just a Southern culture magazine, but they have good editors who seem to know how to maintain a consistent tone. Wonderful photography too.
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 10:13 PM on April 6, 2011

Do these articles get released in an anthology? I absolutely love articles like this, but can't stand reading on the computer for an extended length of time.
posted by smithsmith at 2:14 PM on April 7, 2011