CALL FOR ENTRIES Harriet Beecher Stowe Center 2018 Stowe Prize For Writing to Advance Social Justice AND 2018 Student Stowe Prize

CALL FOR ENTRIES

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

2018 Stowe Prize

For Writing to Advance Social Justice

AND

2018 Student Stowe Prize

Bi-Annual Prizes Now Awarded Annually

Hartford, CT – The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center seeks submissions for two 2018 literary prizes: The Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice is open to published authors and the Student Stowe Prize is open to high school and college students. Formerly awarded bi-annually, the Prizes will be awarded annually beginning in 2018.

According to Katherine Kane, Stowe Center Executive Director, “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s most famous work, the best-selling antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, contributed to a groundswell of opposition to slavery in the United States. The Stowe Prize and Student Stowe Prize recognize writing that has affected a contemporary social justice issue and fulfills the Stowe Center’s mission to use Stowe’s story and impact to inspire social justice and positive change.”

The Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center seeks submissions from U.S. authors for the 2018 Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice. The Prize includes a $10,000 award. Entries must be postmarked by September 22, 2017 and delivered to Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, 77 Forest Street, Hartford, CT 06105. For more information and entry forms: StowePrize@StoweCenter.org.

Named in honor of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Stowe Prize was established to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of her birth in 2011. It is awarded to an author whose written work makes a demonstrable impact on a critical social justice issue in the tradition of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Formerly awarded bi-annually, the Stowe Prize will now be awarded annually, along with the Student Stowe Prizes given to a U.S. high school and college student. Previous Stowe Prize winners include: Bryan Stevenson (2017), Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption; Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015), The Case for Reparations published in The Atlantic; Michelle Alexander (2013), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; and Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn (2011) for Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

The Student Stowe Prize

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center seeks submissions from U.S. high school and college students for the 2018 Student Stowe Prize. The Prize includes a $1,000 award for the high school winner and a $2,500 award for the college winner. Entries must be postmarked by February 2, 2018. For more information and entry forms: HarrietBeecherStowe.org.

The Student Stowe Prize, established by the Stowe Center in 2012, recognizes outstanding writing that makes a tangible impact on a social justice issue critical to contemporary society. Issues may include, but are not limited to, race, class and gender. Entries must have been published or publicly presented.

Prize Presentation at the Big Tent Jubilee

The Stowe Prize and Student Stowe Prize awards will be presented at the Stowe Prize Big Tent Jubilee, a fundraising event for the Stowe Center’s education programs, in June 2018. In addition to attending the Big Tent Jubilee, the winners will be featured at a public program preceding the award event.

More information: HarrietBeecherStowe.org

Harriet Beecher Stowe, appalled by the injustice of slavery, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as a call to action. Using print media and the familiar literary form of telling a story, she shone a harsh light on the American institution of slavery. The book became an international bestseller and galvanized the abolition movement before the Civil War.

Stowe Prize Award History

2017 Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

2015 Ta-Nehisi Coates, for his writing in The Atlantic including The Case for Reparations

2013 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

2011 Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Student Stowe Prize Award History

2016 Martese Johnson, University of Virginia

Topic: Criminal Justice

2016 Nina Sachs, Francis W. Parker School

Topic: Empowering Women

2014 Donya Nasser, St. John’s University

Topic: Women in Leadership

Madeline Sachs, University of Chicago Laboratory High School

Topic: Juvenile Justice

2012 Hannah Morgan, University of Maryland

Topic: Homelessness

Tess Domb Sadof, Amherst Regional High School

Topic: Bullying

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is a museum, program center and research library at 77 Forest Street in Hartford, CT and is open year round for tours and programs. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center preserves and interprets Stowe’s Hartford home and the Center’s historic collections, promotes vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspires commitment to social justice and positive change. For the most up to date information, follow on Twitter http://bit.ly/1qpOzCQ

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.