First Person, Essay, or Personal Experience

Winner: Margie Goldsmith — "In a Way, He Took Our Lives, Too", WashingtonPost.com, January 28, 2008

Honorable Mention: Kristin Ohlson — "Watching TV in Kabul", New York Times Magazine, July 20, 2008)

Profiles

Winner: Shari Caudron — "Uncorked" 5280, Denver's Magazine, June, 2008

Honorable Mention: Todd Pitock — "The Toughest Adventurer?" Discovery Channel Magazine, April/May 2008

Honorable Mention: Andrea Cooper — "Am I Nothing But What I Remember?", Neurology Now, July/August 2008

Service

Winner: Florence Williams — "Is it Safe to Heat Food in Plastic?", Good Housekeeping, November 2008

Reporting on a Significant Topic

Winner Siri Carpenter — "Buried Prejudice", Scientific American Mind, April/May 2008

Honorable Mention: Florence Williams — "The Runner's Footprint" Runner's World, November 2008

Honorable Mention: Michelle Nijhuis — "The Doubt Makers", Miller-McCune, June-July 2008

Trade

Winner JoAnn Greco — "La Vida Local", Planning, March 2008

Honorable Mention: Michele Meyer — "When Old Meets New" IIDA Perspective, Fall 2008

Honorable Mention: John Rosengren — "Lakers vs.. Globetrotters—1948" Mlps. St. Paul, March 2008

Business/Technology

Winner: Michael Fitzgerald — "Clawing Back", Boston Globe Magazine, December 14, 2008

Honorable Mention: Michael Fitzgerald — "Hotbed", Fast Company, April 2008

Honorable Mention: Michele Meyer — "The Secret Power of Tweens", USA Weekend Magazine, August 8, 2008

June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism

Winner: Linda Marsa — "Acid Test", Discover, June 2008

Honorable Mention: Douglas Fox - "The Private Life of the Brain" New Scientist, November 8, 2008

Honorable Mention: Katherine Eban — "Your Hospital's Deadly Secret", Portfolio, March 2008

Robin Marantz Henig

A book or article by Robin Marantz Henig repeatedly delivers more than the reader expects. While her official specialty is science and medicine, Robin always supplies a context, weaving in the cultural history and exploring the social implications of a particular development. She writes narrative journalism in a direct, intimate voice often flavored with humor. When necessary, she becomes a participant observer in the story, but it is never about Robin. Her work is as much anthropology as science writing.

For example, Pandora's Baby, winner of ASJA's 2005 Outstanding Book Award and NASW's Science in Society Award, chronicles how in vitro fertilization, thought in 1973 "to threaten the very fabric of civilization," became "a procedure so routine that it's covered by most medical insurance," a cultural transformation that took barely a decade. To set and enrich her story of ambitious doctors and desperate parents, she draws on ancient myths (Pandora and Prometheus) and nineteenth-century icons (Frankenstein), and relates this development to the emergence of feminism.

Her previous book, The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, pieces together the appealing human story of the pioneer geneticist to illustrate how scientific reputations rise and fall. Kirkus Reviews called it "a fascinating picture as well of a scientific age when luck and personalities - and not just brains - determined success."

Indeed, there is hardly a provocative development that Robin hasn't tackled in a 29-year career that embraces eight books and hundreds of articles. In 1993 her ASJA-Award-winning book, A Dancing Matrix covered the timely subject of "How Science Confronts Emerging Viruses." Most recently, she has written cover stories for The New York Times Magazine on detecting liars (how ordinary people do it and how scientists are trying to do it better); "Will We Ever Arrive At The Good Death?" which illustrates in graphic detail "a medical system for the dying that is as ambivalent about dying as we are ourselves" (a harrowing piece to research and write); and on a project to diagnose mysterious diseases which illustrates both the diagnostic process and what Henig calls "the balkanization of medicine." She has also written extensively about aging and about genetic subjects.

All this has earned considerable respect from her peers. Robin has won numerous awards and fellowships. Besides many from ASJA and the one from NASW, she's won the Best Book Prize from the History of Science Society, and has been represented in Best American Science Writing. Pandora's Baby was one of Library Journal's "30 Best Books of the Year." She has received fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the Knight Foundation for Science Writing, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Marine Biological laboratory. Robin has lectured widely: Columbia University School of Journalism, New York University, Boston University Knight Center for Science Journalism, the 92nd Street Y, Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop, the University of Miami, Villanova, Johns Hopkins, the Smithsonian Institution, University of Wisconsin, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, George Washington University, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In all, the quality of her work, and the quantity of quality work she has produced epitomize the criteria for ASJA's Career Achievement Award, which goes to "a member whose ability to tell a story and whose style, range and diversity of career exemplify the profession of independent nonfiction writer."

Cecil Murphey

Early in Cecil (Cec) Murphey's freelance career, he made two vows: to never stop learning about his craft, and to do anything he could to help other writers. One way he's recently honored that pledge is by donating $50,000 to ASJA's Writers Emergency Assistance Fund (WEAF) -- by far the largest gift WEAF has ever received. Thanks to his extraordinary generosity, the Fund was able to boost its maximum second grant from $2,500 to $5,000, literally doubling the amount of help the Fund can give professional writers beset by extreme emergencies.

His gift was inspired by the plight of ASJA member Lori Hall Steele, who faced foreclosure last year as she battled Lou Gehrig's disease and chronic Lyme. Fittingly, Lori, the mom of a 7-year-old son, was the first beneficiary of the grant hike, receiving a total of $10,000 from WEAF last year -- the largest award the Fund has ever given. These grants were part of an outpouring of support that gave Lori much comfort in her final days, before her death in November.

However, Cec's service to fellow freelancers goes far beyond writing checks. A few years ago, he launched a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit foundation that gives needy writers scholarships to attend professional conferences, so they can network, sharpen their skills, and gain inspiration. His charity also provides grants to aid writers in marketing their published work, mainly by paying for exhibition materials to use at book conferences. A sought-after speaker and writing instructor, he's taught at literally hundreds of writers' conferences, as well as providing free mentoring to aspiring authors, several of whom subsequently have broken into print thanks to his sage advice. Cec is one of ASJA's most successful members. He's the author of 112 books, including 90 Minutes in Heaven (with coauthor Don Piper, published by Revell Books), which has sold nearly four million copies in 30 languages, and remains, after more than two years, on the New York Times bestseller list. Two of his other books, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story and a sequel, Think Big, have each racked up more than a million sales. Both are required reading at a number of high schools and colleges.

He's won a number of awards, including the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), The Retailers Choice Award (2007), Blackboard Book of the Year Award (2005), two Silver Angel Awards (2005 and 2004), and the Gold Medallion Award (1995). In addition, he's a three-time winner of the Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists' Author of the Year award.

Through his wide range of accomplishments and mentoring activities, Cec has shown that he fully meets the criteria for the Extraordinary Service Award, which is presented to an ASJA member "whose pattern of providing service, assistance, information, and encouragement to other members -- or to the entire membership or profession -- exemplifies the Society's role as a supportive organization."