In 2022, we were excited to be able to offer a new award, the Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing, which recognizes Edie Turner’s support and mentorship of junior scholars.

All first-book publications submitted to the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing will also be considered for the Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing. There is no separate entry form for the Edie Turner Prize. A $1,000 first-place prize, potentially split between co-winners, will be awarded.

Eligibility for this prize will not affect any book’s consideration for the Victor Turner Prize, and a book may win both awards.

Judging criteria are the same as for the Victor Turner Prize: we seek graceful, accessible ethnographic writing which deeply explores its subject and contributes in innovative and engaging ways to the genre(s) of ethnography and the field of humanistic (and/or post-humanistic) anthropology.

See the Call for Submission 2026

The prize includes a free SHA membership.

Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing

Murals being painted on a large building wall with people working on scaffolding. The artwork includes a skull, a woman in purple, and a police officer holding a bat. The scene is set against a blue sky with some clouds, and train tracks are visible at the bottom of the image.

©Amina Tawasil - Louisville, KY 2023

Past Winners

 

  • Laura McTighe with Women with a Vision, Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South

  • Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon, University of California Press.

    Joseph C. Russo, Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas, Duke University Press.

    Bharat Jayram Venkat, At the Limits of Cure, Duke University Press.

  • Jessica A. Schwartz, Radiation Sounds: Marshallese Music and Nuclear Silences, Duke University Press.

    Yana Stainova, Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela, University of Michigan Press.

  • Saiba Varma, The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir, Duke University Press.

    Scott Stonington, The Spirit Ambulance: Choreographing the End of Life in Thailand, University of California Press.

    Kathryn Mariner, Contingent Kinship: The Flows and Futures of Adoption in the United States, University of California Press.

  • Sarah S. Willen, Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins, University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Rebecca Louise Carter, Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City, University of Chicago Press.

*should you have an addition or correction, please contact societyforhumanisticanthro@gmail.com