Michael Riedel's RAZZLE DAZZLE Wins $10,000 MARFIELD PRIZE National Award for Arts Writing

The Arts Club of Washington has just announced that the winner of the tenth annual Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing, is Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway by Michael Riedel. The book, by the popular New York Post columnist was released in October of 2015, and is available here.

Riedel will travel to Washington, DC, next month for a brief residency, including a visit to a university classroom and an interview with Grace Cavalieri, host of the Library of Congress' podcast, "The Poet and the Poem." On May 18 at 6:30 p.m., he will take part in a conversation with Peter Marks, drama critic for the Washington Post. This is a free event, open to the public.

The club also will honor Riedel at the Tenth Anniversary Marfield Award Dinner on May 19 at 6:30 p.m. with a musical celebration of Broadway. This is a ticketed event for club members and their guests, hosted by Robert Aubry Davis. Both events will take place at the club, located in a historic Federal-era mansion that was the home of President James Monroe.

"Razzle Dazzle presents with verve and brio a compelling history of the business of Broadway, populated by outsized Runyon-esque characters, sycophants, and demagogues," says Marfield Prize judge, Alan Michael Parker. "Eminently readable, it's a book to which we sing along--to quote A Chorus Line, 'one thrilling combination, every move that he makes.' Riedel documents brilliantly the rise of the Schubert family, their internecine maneuvering, and how they saved Broadway more than once (and maybe Times Square too)."

Michael Riedel has been a theater columnist for the New York Post since 1998 and is the cohost of Theater Talk with PBS. He has written for the New York Daily News, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, Mirabella, Departures, and Commentary. Riedel lives in New York City. Razzle Dazzle is his first book.

The Marfield Prize, sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, recognizes the author of an outstanding nonfiction book about the arts published in the previous calendar year. This $10,000 prize is designed to recognize excellence in arts writing for a general audience and is one of the highest monetary awards for a single-author book.

This year's award judges are Alan Michael Parker, professor of English at Davidson College and author of three novels and eight collections of poems; Remica L. Bingham-Risher, Cave Canem fellow and director of writing and faculty development at Old Dominion University; and Robert Aubry Davis, creator and host of the public radio show Millennium of Music and host and moderator of WETA TV's arts discussion program, Around Town.

The other three finalists for the 2015 Marfield Prize were:

Hayden Herrera, Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Mark Ribowsky, Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul (Liveright)

Ilan Stavans, Quixote: The Novel and the World (W. W. Norton & Company)

The National Award for Arts Writing is given annually by the Arts Club of Washington to the author of a nonfiction book about the visual, literary, or performing arts. Works first published in the United States during the previous calendar year are eligible. Created to generate broader interest in the arts among general readers, the award celebrates prose that is clear and inspiring, creating a strong connection with the arts and artists. First given in 2006, the prize's endowment was established by longtime Arts Club member Jeannie S. Marfield in honor of Florence Berryman and Helen Wharton.

Past recipients of the award are Scott Reynolds Nelson for Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend (Oxford University Press, 2006); Jenny Uglow for Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007); co-winners Brenda Wineapple for White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Anchor, 2008) and Michael Sragow for Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Pantheon, 2008); Linda Gordon for Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009); R. Tripp Evans for Grant Wood: A Life (Knopf, 2010); Yael Tamar Lewin for Night's Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins (Wesleyan University Press, 2011); Anne-Marie O'Connor for The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (Knopf, 2012); Sherill Tippins for Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013); and Philip Gefter for Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe (Liveright, 2014).

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