The 2005 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for non-fiction
About the Award
Introduction of Swanee Hunt at the Award Ceremony
This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace
Winner of the 2005 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for non-fiction
The prestigious L.L. Winship/PEN New England Book Award was established by the Boston Globe in 1975 and is now cosponsored by PEN New England.
Previous winners of the L.L. Winship Award include E.B. White, Andre Dubus, Susan Cheever, Tracy Kidder, Mary Oliver, Susan Quinn, Jill Ker Conway, Jan Swafford, and Anita Shreve.
PEN New England is one of five regional branches of the PEN American Center, which in turn is part of International PEN, the only worldwide organization of writing professionals. Our mission is to advance the cause of literature and reading and to defend free expression everywhere.
To learn more, visit http://www.pen-ne.org/awards/winship_award.html.
Introduction of Swanee Hunt
John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA
April 10, 2005
"While victimization and suffering are all too real a feature of the lives of the women chronicled in Swanee Hunt's This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, the real story is one of struggle and moral courage. Here are women who have demonstrated for the world how to keep human dignity and compassion alive in the most hellish circumstances imaginable. Organizing to distribute food, fuel, and medicine to those in need, often across ethnic lines drawn by war mongers and demagogues. In This Was Not Our War, Swanee Hunt has collected and featured the voices of these women and through her skillful orchestration, she has lodged their stories in our hearts. Stories that ask hard questions and offer real lessons if we but heed them."
Courtesy of JFK Library