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.
Anthony Marx became President and CEO of The New York Public Library on July 1, 2011. A distinguished political scientist, hewas formerly President of Amherst College, where he earned wide recognition for his passionate promotion of accessibility to higher education for lower-income students and established the most effective program in the country to increase socio-economic diversity among the student body. He is the author of more than a dozen scholarly articles and three books, including Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism and Making Race and Nation. In his first year at the Library he led a planning process to increase educational programming in the branches and services to researchers, and ensure public access to electronic books, as well as planning renovations for a state-of-the-art central branch library. Prior to joining Amherst in 2003, Dr. Marx served as professor and director of undergraduate studies of political science at Columbia University, where he spearheaded a number of secondary school initiatives. In the 1980s, he helped found Khanya College, a South African secondary school that prepares more than 1,000 black students for university study. Dr. Marx will advise the board on a range of issues including education, new media and organizational matters related to nonprofits.
Deborah Needleman has had a diverse and idiosyncratic career in media. Successful editor of three different publications, from the much beloved domino magazine, which she conceived and launched, to her development of weekend lifestyle coverage for the Wall Street Journal through the creation of the Saturday “Off Duty” section and the editorship of WSJ Magazine, which she transformed and made into a monthly publication, to the editorship of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, which she took over in late 2012 and redesigned; under her direction its ad pages experienced a 26% increase in the first six months of 2013. Deborah Needleman will advise the board and staff on strategies for expanding the impact of the Awards and the Foundation’s programs.
“The recruitment of Annette Gordon-Reed, Tony Marx, and Deborah Needleman will fill vital strategic needs for our organization,” adds Foundation Executive Director Harold Augenbraum. We look forward to their valuable counsel.”