2009 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award

Judy Pasternak
Yellow Dirt: The Betrayal of the Navajos (Free Press)

Judges’ Citation

In Yellow Dirt: The Betrayal of the Navajos, Judy Pasternak promises to tell a narrative history of the most dramatic and profound sort. Nearly sixty years ago, mining companies descended on the Navajo nation to dig up uranium for the United States government, which was busily building up a stockpile of nuclear weapons, and in the process they turned the beautiful Navajo lands into a toxic environment, where even today there are areas with astonishingly high levels of radiation. Through original research and numerous interviews, she will document one of the darker chapters in 20th century American history. At the same time, her book will tell a moving story of the Navajo people—their love of the land, their spiritual perceptions of the world, and their own complicated involvement in the mining of the “yellow dirt.” Readers will come to intimately know four generations of a proud Navajo family, whose patriarch, Adika’i, foresaw the harm that would come to the Navajo people from this enterprise. Judy Pasternak’s reporting is impeccable, her writing is vivid, and her subject is a most worthy one. As J. Anthony Lukas proved in Common Ground, this is a recipe for creating a memorable and important work of non-fiction.

Bio

Judy Pasternak is a writer who lives near Washington, DC. She worked for the Los Angeles Times for 24 years, in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, tackling subjects as varied as al Qaeda’s private airline, a band of right-wing bank robbers, backstage maneuvering at Dick Cheney’s energy task force and the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way. She has won numerous awards for environmental and investigative journalism. Previously, she worked at the Detroit Free Press, Baltimore News American and Hollywood (Fla.) Sun-Tattler. She is married, with one son.

Judges for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award

2009 Lukas Prize Winners
Read the Press Release