The Sidney Prize is a monthly award to honor journalists who pursue investigative reporting and deep storytelling in the public interest. The prize is named after the late president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), Sidney Hillman, who fought for better working conditions for the American worker and a progressive industrial democracy. The Hillman Foundation was established in his name and continues to work to illuminate critical issues facing the working class and seek equitable solutions to help people improve their lives.

SU art history major Sophia Jactel won the 2023 Sidney Prize for her paper, Domesticities and Diversions: Josef Israels’s Smoker as a Symbol of Peasant Culture and the Home in Nineteenth-Century Holland. The article was written for a senior capstone course with professor Sally Cornelison. Sophia also joined her fellow art history majors in co-curating the fall exhibition Domesticities: The Art of Daily Life in Syracuse University’s galleries, and her research on Israels’s print helped to inform it.

In order to perpetuate in some small measure the generative influence which the late Sidney Cox exerted over hundreds of Dartmouth students in and out of his classes, a group of his friends has been soliciting funds with a view toward establishing an annual prize for that piece of undergraduate writing which most nearly meets the high standard of originality and integrity which the prize winner sets for himself and his students. The Committee, if one may call it that, has stipulated that any kind of undergraduate writing in English may be submitted for consideration; and the manuscripts will be judged by a single anonymous judge selected yearly from among the Committee’s Hanover members.

The 2024 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation and Overland Magazine, is now closed. The winning story will be published in the autumn edition of Overland, while two runners-up will be published online. Thanks to the judges for their tireless efforts and commitment to the integrity of the blind judging process.

The winners of the Sidney prize are notified by email. To request the names of the winners, please send a self-addressed, stamped business size envelope by 5/1/2024 to: SFCU Cash Giveaway Winner List, 42 Union St., Sidney, NY 13838. Winners will be listed by state and city/town of residence. For complete rules and details, please visit the SFCU Cash Giveaway page. Thank you to everyone who entered the contest! Good luck next year!