The resistance group Writers for Democratic Action has announced the winner of a new award that honors “a writer whose voice powerfully embodies the wisdom, courage, and steadfastness that marked the lives of Todd Gitlin and Paul Auster, WDA Founding Members.”
Heather Cox Richardson is the inaugural winner of the Gitlin-Auster Defender of Democracy Award, which, the group says, “underscores the writer’s public responsibility in a time of unprecedented crisis, and celebrates the power of words to record history and to change it.”
Richardson, a historian and Boston College professor, is the author of books including Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre; To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party; How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America; and Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. She is also the author of the newsletter Letters From an American.
Writers for Democratic Action was founded in 2020 under the name Writers Against Trump. The group describes itself as “a volunteer organization devoted to working for democracy, especially in the U.S. where our democracy is under attack in the wake of political violence, an attempted coup d’état by a former President…virulent conspiracy theory campaigns, and assaults on the rights of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community.”
The group’s steering committee includes Sophie Auster, Jericho Brown, Carolyn Forché, Siri Hustvedt, and Natasha Trethewey.
Richardson will join Hustvedt for an online conversation on Sept. 19. Readers can watch the event at a series of watch parties being organized by Writers for Democratic Action.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
