Environmental writer and historian Rebecca Solnit has received the second annual Utah Award in the Environmental Humanities, a $10,000 prize given by the University of Utah Environmental Humanities Graduate Program.
Solnit, who is the author of 20 books, has said that anti-nuclear activism at the Nevada Test Site taught her how to combine personal essays, journalism and art criticism into complex essays. After the 2016 presidential election, she became the voice of the resistance when she offered a free download of her book Hope in the Dark. Her most recent book, Drowned River: The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado explores the wreckage of Lake Powell in the age of climate change.
The inaugural Utah Award was given to Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh in 2018.