The trustees of the Richards Free Library are pleased to announce that Tracy Kidder has won the 1998 Sarah Josepha Hale Award. Mr. Kidder will receive the award in recognition of his distinguished contributed to the world of letters. He will accept the medal at the Newport Opera House on September 26, 1998.

Tracy Kidder is the author of The Road to Yuba City: A Journey into the Juan Corona Murders (1974); The Soul of a New Machine (1981); House (1985); Among Schoolchildren (1989), and Old Friends (1993). His awards include the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award for The Soul of a New Machine; and the Christopher Award, Robert F. Kennedy Award, and Ambassador Book Award for Among Schoolchildren. He has been a prize winning contributing editor of Atlantic Monthly since 1982.

The Sarah Josepha Hale Award, presented annually since 1956, goes to a write who, through his or her life work, maintains a connection to New England. Selection is by a panel of twelve judges, including: John Berry, editor of Library Journal, Jere Daniell, Professor, Dartmouth College, William B. Ketter, editor of the Quincy, MA Patriot Ledger, Deborah Stone, Professor, Brandeis University, and Barbara Holden Yeomans, co-founder of the award and the Friends of the Richards Free Library. Named for Sarah Josepha Hale, the award honors the contributions of one of America's most powerful women of the Nineteenth Century. The Newport author of several books and hundreds of poems, shaped the opinion of American women for 40 years through editorials in Godey's Lady's Magazine.

Tickets for Mr. Kidder's presentation will go on sale in early September. For more information please contact Andrea Thorpe at (603) 863-3430.