NewSouth author and award-winning journalist Rheta Grimsley Johnson has been named the winner of the 2010 Clarence Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing. Established in 1997 to honor exemplary non-fiction writing over a long career, the Cason Award is given annually by the University of Alabama’s journalism department within the Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences. Johnson will receive the award at a banquet in her honor at the Hotel Capstone in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Tuesday, March 9.
Rheta Grimsley Johnson has covered the South for over three decades as a newspaper reporter and columnist, and her memorable career is punctuated by her distinctive writing voice and an unerring knack for revealing her much-loved South through uncommon stories about its common people.
Johnson is no stranger to receiving awards—she’s garnered many during her over three decade tenure covering the South, including the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award for human interest reporting (1983), the Headliner Award for commentary (1985), and the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award for commentary (1982). In 1986 Johnson was inducted into the Scripps Howard Newspapers Editorial Hall of Fame, and in 1991 she was one of the three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Syndicated today by King Features of New York, Johnson’s column appears in about fifty papers nationwide.
Johnson is also the author of several books, including the NewSouth published Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana and the forthcoming Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir.
The evening’s event begins at 6:00 p.m., and tickets for the dinner are $50. To order tickets, call Sheila Davis at 205-348-4787.