The Sidney Prize is awarded monthly to an outstanding piece of journalism that appeared in the previous month. Nominations are due by the last day of each month. A winner is selected on the second Wednesday of each month. Nominations can be made for your own work or someone else’s. The winning article will be featured in the New York Times and on our website. Nominees are not eligible to win the prize for the same piece of work more than once. The prize is named after Sydney Hillman, a union pioneer and New Deal architect.
The prize is open to journalists based in the United States and Canada. The prize honors the legacy of the foundation’s namesake and aims to foster a spirit of inquiry and depth of storytelling in service to the common good. It has been awarded to contributors to the daily, periodical and labor press, as well as authors and broadcasters since 1950.
Annie Zhang, who lives on unceded Wangal land, has been awarded the 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize for her story ‘Who Rattles the Night?’ This is the first time the award has been presented to an Australian writer. Previously, it has been won by UK-based writers Joanna Trollope and Robert Ardrey. Runner-ups are Madeleine Rebbechi for her story ‘A Map of Underneath’ and Sheila Ngoc Pham for her story ‘Whack-a-Mole’.
In the past, many of the essays nominated for the prize have probed the intersection between science and the humanities. In the fall of 2018, for example, intellectual heavyweights Steven Pinker and Leon Wieseltier went toe-to-toe in The New Republic over the proper role of science in modern thought. Pinker took the expansive view, arguing that — despite what some blinkered humanities professors might argue — science gives us insight into nearly everything.
Since its founding, the Hillman Foundation has sought to shed light on the great issues of our time. These include the search for a basis for lasting peace, the fight to ensure safe housing, health care and jobs for all people, the struggle against economic inequality and social injustice and the battle for civil liberties and democracy.
The foundation’s awards programs, including the Hillman Prize and SEIU Hillman Prize for Reporting on Racial and Economic Justice, reflect these concerns. The foundation also supports a number of research initiatives and scholarly conferences. In addition, it makes grants in the tens of thousands of dollars to support scholarships, lectures and research on college campuses. The Foundation’s philanthropy has been recognized with the National Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, and has received international recognition as an innovator in grantmaking. The Foundation is grateful for the support of its donors. The Foundation’s current assets are $18 million. Its annual revenue is $7.5 million. The Foundation’s assets are invested in a variety of investment vehicles, with the largest share in private equity. The remainder is in endowment.