Assistant Professor of English Jeffrey Sharlet was recently awarded the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission’s 2011 Outspoken Award, which honors the leadership of an ally of the global lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Sharlet received the award for his narrative portrait of a Ugandan anti-gay crusader in C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, his third book of creative nonfiction. His previous book was The New York Times bestseller The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
Writer Jeffrey Sharlet, assistant professor of English, is the recipient of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission’s 2011 Outspoken Award, honoring his leadership as an ally of the global lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. (photo by Joseph Mehling ’69)
“As a writer, I’ve always been interested in the margins, because I believe that’s where the front lines tend to be—where the action is,” says Sharlet, “not in some battle between ‘left’ and ‘right,’ but in the conversation, and often the debate, about what the ‘human’ in ‘human rights’ means, who counts, and who does the counting.” He continues, “I’m honored by the award because I see it as evidence that as a writer I’m in the right place, on the front lines of the questions that matter most to me.”
Previous recipients of the Outspoken Award include Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. More information about the award is available online.
