Harriet Brown, assistant professor of magazine in Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, has won the 2011 John F. Murray Prize in Strategic Communication for the Public Good from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of Iowa. She was nominated for the award by Newhouse Dean Lorraine Branham.
The Murray Prize is given to “a pioneering innovator who uses communications to ennoble the human spirit.” Nominees are “individual[s] whose work through persuasive communication has elevated the well-being of our shared human existence.”
Brown, a veteran writer and editor, specializes in writing about issues that affect the lives of women and children. Her work, on subjects ranging from fat acceptance to forgiveness, appears in the New York Times Magazine, O, Health, Glamour, Vogue and many other publications. Her most recent book, “Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia” (William Morrow, 2010), recounts her family’s efforts to help her oldest daughter recover from anorexia nervosa. She is the editor of “Feed Me! Writers Dish about Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image” (Ballantine Books, 2009) and “Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories about the Men We Used to Love” (Ballantine Books, 2007) and the author of “The Good-Bye Window: A Year in the Life of a Day-Care Center” (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998)
Her radio essays can be heard on NPR’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” She co-chairs Maudsley Parents (http://www.maudsleyparents.org), a website of resources for families struggling with eating disorders, and is a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders.
She will be honored at a dinner ceremony on Oct. 14.
The prize, which carries an honorarium, is named after the late John F. Murray, an internationally known benefactor and philanthropist and strategic communication pioneer.
