March 2007
First Take: The Worst Is the Best Print
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Photo by Sophie Egan.
A joke that’s sometimes made at the Pulitzer Prize ceremony is that the day’s winners “now know what the first line of their obituary will say.” But Tim Egan, ’81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, can no longer be certain how his will read. On Nov. 15 he added the equally prestigious National Book Award to his résumé.

Honored for his nonfiction book The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, Egan became only the second UW graduate to bring home the prize. (Beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary, ’39, also won it in 1981.) In the days following the awards ceremony, the words that most often preceded Egan’s name were actually “surprise winner.” He’d bested an impressive group of nominees, including At Canaan’s Edge, the final volume in Taylor Branch’s influential trilogy on the Civil Rights era. Egan will give the keynote address at the Department of Communication semicentennial open house held on April 28 during Washington Weekend (see p. 41).
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Library of Congress photo.