Presenter of
the National Book Awards
Subscribe
to our newsletter
Subscribe
to our MONTHLY newsletter
for updates on our programs,
the National Book Awards, and more
2023 Science + Literature Selection Committee
J. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, and a 2022 MacArthur Fellow. He is an author and the 2022 Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina. His creative works include The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, Sparrow Envy: Poems, and Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts.
2023 Science + Literature Selection Committee
Latif Nasser is co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios show Radiolab, where he has reported on everything from snowflake photography to meat allergies to space junk. He also hosted and executive produced the Emmy-nominated Netflix science docuseries Connected. He has given two TED talks, wrote for the Boston Globe Ideas section, and has a PhD from Harvard University’s History of Science department.
2023 Science + Literature Selection Committee
Ben Green is a postdoctoral scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows and an assistant professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics, with a secondary field in Science, Technology, and Society, from Harvard University. He studies the ethics of government algorithms, with a focus on algorithmic fairness, human-algorithm interactions, and AI regulation. He is the author of The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in Its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future. Green is also an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and a Fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Starting in 2023, he will be an assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Information.
2023 Science + Literature Selection Committee (Chair)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times bestseller World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, which was named the 2020 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year, and four books of poetry, most recently, Oceanic. Awards for her writing include Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. She is the poetry editor of The Sierra Club’s Sierra magazine and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi.
Lydia Millet is a writer of fiction, opinion pieces, and other ephemera. Her 2020 novel A Children’s Bible was a Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and one of the New York Times Book Review’s Best 10 Books of 2020. In 2019 she received an Award of Merit for the Short Story from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her 2010 story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Since 1999 she has been an editor at the Center for Biological Diversity, a group dedicated to fighting extinction and climate change. She lives in the Arizona desert.
2022 Science + Literature Selection Committee
Aaron Yazzie is a Mechanical Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where he designs mechanical systems for NASA’s robotic space research missions. His most extensive contributions have been for missions to the planet Mars, which include roles on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, the InSight Mars lander, and the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Yazzie is Diné (Navajo). He was born in Tuba City, Arizona on the Navajo Nation, and raised in Holbrook, Arizona. Through frequent outreach efforts, public engagement, and volunteer work, Yazzie is passionate about increasing and improving representation of Indigenous Peoples in STEM fields.
2022 Science + Literature Selection Committee
Writer, researcher, and entrepreneur Margot Lee Shetterly is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, and an Executive Producer of the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of her book. She is also the founder of the Human Computer Project, a digital archive telling the stories of all of NASA’s “Human Computers.” Shetterly is a scholar-in-residence at the University of Virginia, with joint appointments at the McIntire School of Commerce and the School of Engineering.
2022 Science + Literature Selection Committee
Dr. Morgan Halane is a New York City-based biologist affiliated with Great Ecology and Atlas Obscura. He received a BA in English from the University of Missouri with a capstone focused on the adaptation of science fiction literature into film. His graduate and postdoctoral studies in the life sciences at the University of Missouri, Pohang University of Science and Technology, and the University of California, Riverside led to advances in our understanding of plant immunity to pathogens. He has published his work in several journals including Science, PLOS Pathogens, and the Annual Review of Plant Biology.
2022 Science + Literature Selection Committee
Dr. Safiya U. Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where she serves as the co-founder and co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. She holds affiliations in the School of Education & Information Studies, and is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is a Commissioner on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance. Dr. Noble is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment.
