Maplewoodian Dan Barry will be the recipient of this year’s Maplewood Literary Award, presented by the Maplewood Library as part of the 2016 Ideas Festival. The Literary Award program will be held at the Main Library on Saturday, April 2 at 2 p.m.. Copies of Barry’s books will be available for sale and signing.
Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and reporter for The New York Times and the author of four books, including the forthcoming The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland, set to be released in May 2016.
The author Colum McCann has written that “Dan Barry gives dignity even to the darkest corners of the American experience. He is the closest thing we have to a contemporary Steinbeck.”
Barry is currently the “This Land” columnist for the Times, and has reported extensively on many topics, including the World Trade Center disaster and its aftermath and the damage to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He has also been the City Hall bureau chief, the Long Island bureau chief, a sportswriter, a general assignment reporter, and, for three years, the “About New York” columnist – all for the Times.
Barry has also written Pull Me Up: A Memoir; City Lights: Stories About New York, a collection of his “About New York” columns; and Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game, which received the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.
Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, Barry grew up on Long Island and has lived in Maplewood since 1999. He and his wife, Maplewood native Mary Trinity, have two daughters, Nora and Grace.
