YAM Art Director Jeanine Dunn.
The hard-working crew at New Haven-based Yale Alumni Magazine captured a national award last week for “The Long Agony of Racism,” a cover package of stories exploring the issues raised by the police killing of George Floyd, published a month after his death.
The award was presented last week at the annual Folio: gala in New York, a national magazine publishing event. YAM Editor Kathrin Day Lassila also won a column-writing award at the event.
Following is a release from YAM with details about the awards:
The Yale Alumni Magazine received two awards for excellence on October 14, 2021, at the Folio: gala in New York City. “The Long Agony of Racism,” the July/August 2020 cover story, won for Essays and Criticism; and “New to the World,” about children’s books, won in the Column/Blog category. (Both categories were in the “association/nonprofit” division.)
Folio:’s annual award night brings together magazine publishers from many different fields to celebrate “engaging content and exceptional design.”
The winning feature, “The Long Agony of Racism” (https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/5171-the-long-agony-of-racism), had been published in the July/August 2020 Yale Alumni Magazine shortly after the brutal death of George Floyd. Three Yale professors wrote the essays for it: “A devastating and ruinous history” was by Larry Gladney, “Rewriting the end” by Emily Greenwood (now at Princeton), and “Race relations at this perilous moment” by Gerald Jaynes. “The grievous cycle of national mourning around the spectacle of the black body subjected to torture and death is a cycle that we can and must break,” wrote Greenwood. “We can rewrite this end.”
The winning column, “New to the World” (https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/5189-new-to-the-world), was written by Yale Alumni Magazine Editor Kathrin Day Lassila after a discussion with children’s book scholar and historian Leonard Marcus. “Children are so new to the world that very little of what happens to them feels familiar, or particularly safe,” he said, “and a story by its nature has a shape that reinforces the sense of order and clarity about life.” Lassila concluded: “We can all use order and clarity in life. Support your fellow humans. And read good books.”
In addition, “Yale vs COVID,” an illustration guided by the Yale Alumni Magazine’s art director, Jeanine Dunn, for the July/August 2020 issue, was a Finalist in the Feature Design category. “A steely, quiet strength,” Lassila’s tribute to scholar Deborah Rhode in the March/April 2021 issue, was a Finalist in the Column/Blog category.
