The National Book Foundation Elects Three New Board Members
New York, NY (July 9, 2013) – The National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, has elected three new members to its Board of Directors: Annette Gordon-Reed, Winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize; Anthony Marx, President and CEO of The New York Public Library; and Deborah Needleman, Editor-in-Chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
The addition of these new board members builds on recent steps the National Book Foundation has been taking to broaden the reach of the National Book Awards. These steps included adding a “long-list,” expanding the pool of potential judges, and announcing the finalists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
“Our goal is to increase the impact that the best American writing has on our culture,” said David Steinberger, Chairman of the Foundation’s Board and President & CEO of Perseus Books. “With that objective in mind, we are gratified to be welcoming three new Board members of such extraordinary stature.”
Each of the new board members will serve a three-year term, renewable twice.
The new members of the Foundation’s Board:
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, Professor of History in the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.
Among her honors, she was awarded the 2009 National Book Award in Nonfiction and the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family and she is the first National Book Award Winner to serve on the Foundation’s Board. Professor Gordon-Reed was educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. In 2010, she received the National Humanities Medal and was named a MacArthur Fellow. She is also the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, Vernon Can Read! (a memoir of Vernon Jordan), Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History, and the highly acclaimed biography Andrew Johnson. Annette Gordon-Reed is a transformative historian who has changed our national understanding of the relationship between slaves and slave-owners. As an award-winning writer and educator, Professor Gordon-Reed will provide a strategic, authorial voice on the board.
