Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Outside Entry Title: Mississippi Delta: Returning Home to Its Haunted Past Entry Credit: W. Ralph Eubanks Judge Comment: W. Ralph Eubanks blends his family’s racially complex story with the troubling legacy of what’s known as “the most Southern place on Earth” — the Mississippi Delta. Eubanks writes of “beauty and pain... indelibly linked across time...[and] a land defined by the blues music that once seemed to wail across tall flood-protection levees and every furrow plowed into the dirt.”
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Morgan Tilton Entry Title: Bikepacking Dinétah Entry Credit: Morgan Tilton Judge Comment: A three-day bike ride through the red rock country of the Navajo Reservation serves as the spine of a rich and ancient story. It details how Jon Yazzie, born and raised on the Rez, transforms his love of biking into creating trails for economic, recreational, tourism and spiritual development of a stunning place he loves dearly.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Rosalind Cummings- Yeates Entry Title: A Journey to Discover an African Homeland Entry Credit: Rosalind Cummings-Yeates Judge Comment: In this story, the writer reveals how at-home DNA testing is fueling tourism for descendants of enslaved Africans. It follows a woman who grew up in Cameroon and migrated to America. Now, to the delight of those who travel with her touring company, Roots to Glory, tourists can discover their own connections with ancestry, history, culture and African foodways.
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Lauren Sloss Entry Title: Clean Energy, Cherished Waters and a Sacred California Rock Caught in the Middle Entry Credit: Lauren Sloss Judge Comment: The struggle over federal plans to develop a National Marine Sanctuary on the California coast is at the center of this story. Lauren Sloss weaves deep reporting and personal perspective from the vantage point of a kayak trip around an exquisite waterscape and landscape where a wind energy proposal collides with a conservation effort.
