SELC announces 2025 Reed Environmental Writing Award winners and featured speaker

admin 0 Comments February 13, 2025

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Feb. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Today the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) announced the winners of its 2025 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award. Through their work, winners Jonathan Mingle, Jared Kofsky, Maia Rosenfeld, and Steve Osunsami demonstrate the power of writing to capture some of the most important environmental issues facing Southern communities.

The Reed Award celebrates writers who achieve both literary excellence and offer extraordinary insight into the South’s natural treasures and environmental challenges. Presented every year, the Reed Award recognizes outstanding writing on the Southern environment in two categories. The Book category honors works of nonfiction that are not self-published, and the Journalism category honors newspaper, magazine, and online writing published by a recognized institution such as a news organization, university, or nonprofit group.

Here are this year’s winners:

Book Category

Jonathan Mingle receives the Reed Award for “Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America’s Energy Future.” His book tells the story of communities fighting against Dominion Energy’s proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline in Virginia. This deeply reported account of the struggle between the energy company and local residents raises critical questions about the promotions of methane gas as a “bridge fuel” amidst the climate crisis, and about the broader political and environmental consequences of our continued fossil fuel reliance.

Journalism Category

Jared Kofsky, Maia Rosenfeld, and Steve Osunsami receive the Reed Award for their ABC News investigation, “Our Inheritance is Washing Away ” The two-part story reveals how a highway widening project in Alabama disproportionately harmed the predominantly Black community of Shiloh, causing severe flooding and damage to generational family properties. The reporting highlights residents’ fight for environmental justice and the state’s use of restrictive legal settlements to evade accountability for the project’s discriminatory impacts, emphasizing the ongoing struggle against environmental racism.

An award ceremony will be held in honor of the winners during the Virginia Festival of the Book. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held at 5 p.m. on March 21, in the CODE Building, located at 225 West Water Street on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Va. The event will also be streamed online.

Register now to attend the ceremony or watch the livestream: https://www.southernenvironment.org/reed-award-registration/

Tim Kaine—current U.S. Senator representing Virginia, former Governor of Virginia, Richmond mayor, and civil rights attorney, and longtime outdoor enthusiast—will be this year’s featured speaker. His latest book is a compelling account of one man’s journey across hundreds of miles of Virginia wilderness and a moving testament to the optimistic spirit of America. “Walk Ride Paddle” provides an unseen glimpse into a life outside.

This Year’s Book Award Winner: Jonathan Mingle

Jonathan Mingle’s “Gaslight” is a powerful narrative nonfiction account of the six-year fight against the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project proposed in 2014 as crucial to providing a “bridge fuel” to a cleaner energy future. The book vividly recounts the David-versus-Goliath struggle between Dominion Energy, a powerful utility corporation wielding significant political influence, and a diverse coalition of communities in the mountains of Virginia who mobilized to protect their homes, livelihoods, neighbors and shared futures. Mingle masterfully weaves together personal stories, legal battles, and scientific evidence to expose the deceptive marketing surrounding methane gas, revealing its environmental costs and the disproportionate burden placed on residents in the project’s path.

Mingle’s meticulous research and compelling storytelling highlight the inherent contradiction of framing methane gas as a climate solution while ignoring its immediate and long-term environmental consequences. By humanizing the fight against this “favorite fossil fuel,” Mingle compels readers to critically examine America’s energy choices and the ethical responsibilities that come with them.

This Year’s Journalism Award Winners: Jared Kofsky, Maia Rosenfeld, and Steve Osunsami

Jared Kofsky, Maia Rosenfeld, and Steve Osunsami’s two-part ABC News investigation, “Our Inheritance is Washing Away,” exposes environmental injustice in Shiloh, Alabama, a predominantly Black community devastated by flooding residents attribute to a highway widening project. The reporting details how the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) allegedly prioritized infrastructure development over the well-being of residents, resulting in repeated and severe flooding that damaged homes and disrupted lives. The reporters highlight the residents’ struggle against ALDOT, which, they allege, attempted to silence residents through legally questionable settlements that prevented future lawsuits.

The investigation goes beyond the immediate crisis, uncovering evidence of the state’s awareness of the flooding risks and the failure to address them adequately. It also details the use of restrictive covenants to prevent future legal action against the state, a tactic criticized as “highway robbery” for its inequitable nature and silencing of residents’ voices. The series culminates with a visit from U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, highlighting the national attention brought to Shiloh’s plight. Kofsky, Rosenfeld, and Osunsami’s reporting uses compelling narratives and evidence to expose systemic issues of environmental racism, underscoring the need for accountability and systemic change to protect vulnerable communities.

Southern Environmental Law Center

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 200, including more than 100 attorneys, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.

southernenvironment.org

About the Reed Award

SELC created the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 1994 to enhance public awareness of the value and vulnerability of the South’s natural treasures and to recognize and encourage the writers who most effectively tell the stories about the region’s environment. The award is named for SELC founding trustee Phil Reed, a talented attorney and committed environmental leader who believed deeply in the power of writing to change hearts and minds.

Selected by a distinguished panel of judges, Reed Award winners recently have included Emily Strasser for her book Half-Life of a Secret, NPR’s David Folkenflik with Floodlight’s Mario Ariza and Miranda Green, Corban Addison for Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial, Isabelle Chapman author of Gambling ‘America’s Amazon for CNN; and J. Drew Lanham, author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.