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Richard J Margolis Award

About Richard J. Margolis

Career Highlights

selected articles

Selected New Leader Columns

Reports & Monographs

Op-Ed Pieces & Book Reviews

 

Past Winners

2017
Leslie Jill Patterson

 

2016
Denver David Robinson

 

2015
Daniel Hernandez

 

2014
Blaire Briody

 

2013
Patrick Arden

 

2012
Inara Verzemnieks

 

2011
Sabine Heinlein

 

2010
Doug Hunt

 

2009
Joe Wilkins

 

2008
Gabriel Thompson

 

2007
Stephanie Griest

 

2006
Marie myung-ok lee

 

2005
Kisha Lewellyn

 

2004
Nelson smith

 

2003
John Bowe

 

2002
Iyesatta Massaquoi

 

2001
Otis Haschemeyer

 

2000
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

 

1999
Susan Parker

 

1998
Laura Distelheim

 

1997
Julie Lasky

 

1996
E.J. Graff

 

1995
Josip Novakovich

 

1994
Maggie Dubris

 

1993
Judith Levine

 

1992
Richard Manning

 

John Bowe

Bowe's investigation of the enslavement of a group of Mexican farmworkers in South Florida resulted in an article which appeared in the April 21, 2003, issue of The New Yorker magazine. "The story," says Bowe, "describes an industry with conditions so exploitive and protections so minimal that the occasional occurrence of slavery is less an accident than a foregone conclusion."  Bowe is currently at work on a book for Random House about the increasing frequency of other slavery cases throughout the U.S. 

Bowe received an MFA from Columbia University's Graduate Film Program in 1996 and co-wrote (with Julian Schnabel) the screenplay for the film "Basquiat".  He is the co-editor of the book GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Prospect, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, among other publications.

Update

John Bowe is the winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for Slavery Inc., to be published by Random House.

"John Bowe's work-an examination of slavery throughout the modern world, including the United States-is characterized by a reasoned and painstaking approach to the gathering of his material," said jurors. "His description has no taint of moral superiority. His writing is understated and stylish; he does not labor to make points, he allows the inexorable drift of his narrative to inform and in all places avoids sensationalism. His account gathers force by means of an accumulation of detail rendered with a steady objectivity. Bowe has drawn the reader's awareness to intolerable practices, abuses of the deepest and most indisputable rights of humanity-the right to be free of oppression and economic tyranny. The slow movement forward of human rights will almost surely be advanced by his book."