Tom Wolfe to Be Honored at 2011 National Magazine Awards Dinner

March 1, 2011

Tom Wolfe to Be Honored at 2011 National Magazine Awards Dinner

ASME to present Creative Excellence Award to New Journalism founder

 
New York, NY (March 1, 2011)—Larry Hackett, managing editor of People and president of the American Society of Magazine Editors, announced today that ASME will pay tribute to Tom Wolfe at the 2011 National Magazine Awards. Mr. Hackett made the announcement at a meeting of the nearly 300 editorial leaders who have gathered in Manhattan to choose this year’s National Magazine Award finalists and winners.

“It’s hard to imagine what magazine journalism would look like today without Tom Wolfe and the New Journalism,” said Mr. Hackett. “From his now-legendary work at New York and Esquire in the 1960s to The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities, both published in Rolling Stone, Tom Wolfe has always been a magazine pioneer. ASME is honored that he has agreed to accept the highest honor we can give a writer—the Creative Excellence Award.”

After beginning his career as a reporter at the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union in 1956, Tom Wolfe joined The New York Herald-Tribune in 1962. His reporting in the 1960s and 1970s—collected in books like The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Pump House Gang, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers—established Mr. Wolfe as one of the most important magazine journalists of the century. Mr. Wolfe’s first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, was first published in Rolling Stone in 1984 and 1985 before appearing in book form in 1987. Since then, Mr. Wolfe has written two more novels, A Man in Full and I Am Charlotte Simmons. He is now working on his next novel in Miami.

The Creative Excellence Award will be presented to Mr. Wolfe at the 2011 National Magazine Awards Annual Gala on May 9 at 583 Park Avenue in New York City. The award was established by ASME in 2008 to recognize writers and photographers who have made unique and enduring contributions to magazines. The Creative Excellence Award was first presented to Annie Leibovitz at the 2009 National Magazine Awards; there was no award in 2010.

The American Society of Magazine Editors is the principal organization for magazine journalists in the United States. The 700 members of ASME include the editorial leaders of most major consumer and business magazines published in print and online. Founded in 1963, ASME works to defend the First Amendment, protect editorial independence and support the development of journalism. ASME sponsors the National Magazine Awards in association with the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Please go to asme.magazine.org for more information.