Yesterday, the American Society of Magazine Editors announced the finalists for the 2012 National Magazine Awards, which judge American publications as a whole as well as specific articles within them. Bloomberg Businessweek, GQ, New York, The New Yorker and Vice are all nominated for overall excellence in the field of general interest magazines, Glamour, More, O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple and W are nominated for women’s interest, and The American Scholar, Aperture, IEEE Spectrum, The New Republic and Virginia Quarterly Review are nominated in the “Thought-Leader” category.
You should take a peek at those titles at your leisure, and check out the full list of finalists here, but we were more interested in the finalists in most of the major article categories. We’ve put together a handy list for you, with links to the nominated work. Yet again, we were flabbergasted and discouraged by the lack of female writers here — of the categories we looked at, they are only nominated in the Public Interest and Fiction sections. Regardless, there’s a lot of good writing here, so click through to get a handle on the ASME nominees, and let us know who you think should take home the prizes in the comments.
PUBLIC INTEREST
5280 Magazine for “Direct Fail,” by Natasha Gardner, December (Read it here) Harper’s Magazine for “Tiny Little Laws,” by Kathy Dobie, February (Read it here) Marie Claire for “The Big Business of Breast Cancer,” by Lea Goldman, October (Read it here) Men’s Health for “The Signature Wound,” by Bob Drury, November (Available as a Kindle Single) The New Yorker for ‘The Invisible Army,” by Sarah Stillman, June 6 (Read it here)
REPORTING
The Atlantic for “Our Man in Kandahar,” by Matthieu Aikins, November (Read it here) Los Angeles for “What Happened to Mitrice Richardson?” by Mike Kessler, September (Read it here) The New Yorker for “The Apostate,” by Lawrence Wright, February 14 & 21 (Read it here) The New Yorker for “Getting bin Laden,” by Nicholas Schmidle, August 8 (Read it here) Vanity Fair for “Echoes From a Distant Battlefield,” by Mark Bowden, December (Read it here)
FEATURE WRITING
Esquire for “Heavenly Father!” by Luke Dittrich, October (Read it here) GQ for “The Man Who Sailed His House,” by Michael Paterniti, October (Read it here) The New York Times Magazine for “You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” by John Jeremiah Sullivan, June 12 (Read it here) The New Yorker for “A Murder Foretold,” by David Grann, April 4 (Read it here) Rolling Stone for “Arms and the Dudes,” by Guy Lawson, March 31 (Read it here)
PROFILE WRITING
D Magazine for “He Is Anonymous,” by Tim Rogers, April (Read it here) ESPN The Magazine for “Game of Her Life,” by Tim Crothers, January 10 (Read it here) Men’s Journal for “The Blind Man Who Taught Himself to See,” by Michael Finkel, March (Read it here) Rolling Stone for “Santiago’s Brain,” by Jeff Tietz, December 8 (Read it here) Sports Illustrated for “Dewayne Dedmon’s Leap of Faith,” by Chris Ballard, November 14 (Read it here)
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Esquire for “The Loading Dock Manifesto,” by John Hyduk, May (Read it here) GQ for “Too Much Information,” by John Jeremiah Sullivan, May iPad Edition (Read it here) New York for “Paper Tigers,” by Wesley Yang, May 16 (Read it here) The New Yorker for “The Aquarium,” by Aleksandar Hemon, June 13 & 20 (Read it here) Slate for “The Stutterer: How He Makes His Voice Heard,” by Nathan Heller, February 22 (Read it here)
COLUMNS AND COMMENTARY
The Atlantic for columns by James Parker, Entertainment columnist. (Read his recent column on Game of Thrones, “The Enchanted State“) Field & Stream for columns by Bill Heavey (Read an excerpt from “My Late Season“) Los Angeles for reviews by Steve Erickson, Film & TV critic (Read his recent review of Luck, “Little Big Man“) TIME for columns by Joel Stein (Read an excerpt of his column on Twitter, “[Redacted] #@!%$ [Deleted]“) Vanity Fair for columns by Christopher Hitchens (Read his last article, “Trial of the Will“)
FICTION
The Atlantic for “Scars,” by Sarah Turcotte, Summer 2011 (Read it here) McSweeney’s Quarterly for “Ambition,” by Jonathan Franzen, April McSweeney’s Quarterly for “The Northeast Kingdom,” by Nathaniel Rich, August Virginia Quarterly Review for “La Moretta,” by Maggie Shipstead, Fall (Read it here) Zoetrope: All-Story for “The Hox River Window,” by Karen Russell, Fall (Read an excerpt here)