Lifetime Achievement Awards

PURPOSE

To honor great artists and scholars who have enabled us to think more profoundly, more intelligently, more critically, and more self-critically about the relations between literature and Christian faith and practice. In honoring them, CCL affirms the value of the religious dimension in literature and scholarship and draws attention to the issues that guide the organization and its members' intellectual commitments.

CRITERIA

The recipient of the award will meet the following criteria:

A. Maturity/Productivity

1. Must have served the profession of letters for a substantial number of years;

2. Must have produced a significant and mature body of written work, whether theoretical, critical, or creative;

B. Professional recognition

3. Must be recognized and respected in the larger professional community for scholarship or creative writing;

C. Dialogue

4. Must have enriched the understanding of the relation of Christianity and literature;

5. Must have contributed significantly to the dialogue among Christian scholars and between Christian scholars and the secular community of professionals.

D. Religious witness

6. All other things being equal, special consideration will be given to candidates who are explicitly associated with a Christian or Jewish religious community.

PROCESS

Any member of CCL may submit the name of a person to be considered for the award. Written nominations should be sent to the President together with suitable documentation in support of the criteria. All nominations that are in hand on or before September 1 will be considered by the Board of Directors at its annual meeting the following January. Any candidate receiving a three-quarters vote will be considered chosen for the award, conditional upon acceptance. The President, with Board approval, will determine the place, time, and manner of conferring the award. The person making the nomination will be informed of the Board's action.

Additional details concerning the selection process are contained in a separate document, which is available to any CCL member on request.

Winners of the lifetime achievement award include:

2011
Rowan Williams

2009
Dana Gioia
Geoffrey Hill

2008
Marilynne Robinson

2007
Frederick Buechner

2006
John Updike

2005
Wendell Berry

2004
Robert Coles

2003
David Lyle Jeffrey

2002
Denis Donoghue

2001
Paul Ricoeur

2000
Doris Betts

1999
Barbara Kiefer Lewalski and Louis Lohr Martz

1998
Czeslaw Milosz

1997
Rene Girard

1996
Walter J. Ong, S.J.

1995
Wayne Booth

1994
Denise Levertov and Owen Barfield

1993
Nathan A. Scott, Jr.

1992
Cleanth Brooks and Richard Wilbur