May 2004

Professor wins top writing award
A book by UM Professor Stewart Justman has been awarded one of the writing world’s highest honors: the 2004 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay.

Justman is a liberal studies faculty member who has taught introductory English composition at UM for three decades. He was rewarded for his “Seeds of Mortality: The Public and Private Worlds of Cancer,” which was published in 2003.

A review of “Seeds of Mortality” by The New England Journal of Medicine said, “Justman cleverly interweaves his own experience as a patient with cancer with reflections on works of literature, the visual arts and philosophy to create an insightful commentary on how cancer is viewed by American society.”

The PEN Award earned by Justman is presented each year to the best collection of essays by an American writer in recognition of “the dignity and esteem the essay form imparts to literature.” The PEN Awards are considered on par with the National Book Awards. Justman will receive the award May 24 during a ceremony in the Lincoln Center in New York.

Justman said, “The award is especially significant to me as it was conferred by writers themselves — members of the craft.”

The PEN American Center, which offers the awards, is a fellowship of writers that has worked for more than 80 years to advance literature, to promote a culture of reading and to defend free expression. The PEN acronym stands for poets, playwrights, essayists, editors and novelists. The organization has 2,700 members, and further information on PEN can be found at www.pen.org.

For information, contact:
Rita.Munzenrider@mso.umt.edu
University Relations
(406) 243-2522

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