$10,000 “Science + Literature” awards are given to poetry, fiction, and nonfiction works.


You’re hardly likely to find a history of deep sea exploration, a coming-of-age book, and a collection of poetry in the same department of your favorite bookstore. However, they all share enough characteristics to be named the winners of the $10,000 Science + Literature awards, which are given out by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Book Foundation this year.

Brad Fox’s nonfiction work “The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths,” Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s novel “Digging Stars,” and poet Arthur Sze’s “The Glass Constellation” were all mentioned by the two foundations on Wednesday as works that “deepen readers’ understanding of science and technology” and “highlight the diversity of voices” in contemporary science and technology writing.

Although only “The Bathysphere Book” is the official winner that can be classified as scientific, all three works make reference to science and the natural world. The main character of “Digging Stars” is a Zimbabwean astronomer who follows in her father’s footsteps in his career. Sze, the 2019 National Book Award winner for poetry, frequently writes about the natural world and the universe. “The tide ebbs and reveals orange and purple sea stars/I have no theory of radiance/but after rain evaporates/off pine needles, the needles glisten,” the opening lines of his poem “At the Equinox” say.

A ceremonial ceremony in central Manhattan on March 27 will honor the writers.

“This year’s deeply researched and inventive selections by Brad Fox, Arthur Sze, and Novuyo Rosa Tshuma exemplify why science and technology are so important to the arts and to our daily lives,” Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation, said in a statement.

Doron Weber, vice president and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, said in a statement that “these gifted storytellers shine a light on the complex inner lives of their characters as they explore the mysteries of the external world, from the ocean to the cosmos, from Japan to Zimbabwe.”

The Sloan foundation, which has funded many books over the years, including two that were made into critically acclaimed films, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography “Oppenheimer” and Margot Lee Shetterly’s “Hidden Figures,” gave a three-year, $525,000 grant to establish Science + Literature in 2022.

Now that the grant is nearing its end, Weber expressed his hope that the Sloan board would authorize financing for an additional three years. There will be a vote in March.

“We are very pleased with the results this far,” Weber said.

A group of authors and scientists, led by committee head Ricardo Nuila, author of “The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine,” poet Brian Teare, evolutionary biologist and PBS anchor Shane Campbell-Staton, selected the winners.

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