Dorothy Wickenden wins Christopher Award for "The Agitators"

Bronxville, N.Y.-based author Dorothy Wickenden is honored with a Christopher Award for her book The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights," (Scribner/Simon & Schuster). It is one of 12 books for adults and young people recognized as the #ChristopherAwards mark their 73rd year. The authors join writers, producers and directors of 10 winning TV/cable and feature films.

In the book, abolitionist Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, Quaker mother of seven and Frances A. Seward, wife of Lincoln's secretary of state, William H. Seward, cross racial and class divides to become friends who fight to abolish slavery and establish women’s rights and true equality for all.

According to its website, the book "opens in the 1820s, when Tubman is enslaved and Wright and Seward are young homemakers bound by law and tradition, and ends after the war. Many of the most prominent figures of the era—Lincoln, William H. Seward, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison—are seen through the discerning eyes of the protagonists. So are the most explosive political debates: about the civil rights of African Americans and women, about the enlistment of Black troops, and about opposing interpretations of the Constitution."

In addition to The Agitators, Dorothy Wickenden is the author of the New York Times bestseller Nothing Daunted. The executive editor of The New Yorker since January 1996, she also writes for the magazine and moderates its weekly podcast The Political Scene. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1988-89 and at MacDowell in 2018, Wickenden was national affairs editor at Newsweek from 1993-1995, and before that was the longtime executive editor at The New Republic.

The celebrated authors, illustrators, writers, producers, and directors, whose works exemplify this Chinese proverb “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness,” also “affirm the highest values of the human spirit,” said Tony Rossi, The Christophers’ Director of Communications. “After the hardships and suffering we’ve witnessed and endured in the last two years, we need stories of hope, light, and unity to lift our spirits and guide us toward a brighter path,” he said.

The Christophers, a nonprofit founded in 1945 by Maryknoll Father James Keller, is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of service to God and humanity. The ancient Chinese proverb—“It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness”— guides its publishing, radio, and awards programs. More information about The Christophers is available at www.christophers.org.