Presented to: Jeffrey Needle
For:
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Review for 2001 to Jeffrey Needle for his collected book reviews appearing on AML-List: An Email List of Mormon Literature (reviews available through the AML-List Archives.).
"How then shall they read the books of which they have not heard?"
Reviewers play an important, and largely unsung, role in the life of a literary community. This is true not only of those who voice judgments of new works, but equally of those who reach back into the past, bringing to our remembrance a knowledge of what has gone before. In so doing, they serve as our collective memory, allowing us to build bridges across time to our half-forgotten literary forebears.
Jeff Needle provides an outstanding example of just such service. Over the past five years, this self-described Jewish Protestant with a sympathetic interest in "all things Mormon" has published over 70 reviews for AML-List -- 23 in 2001 alone. His choices have spanned the range from doctrinal works to Mormon history, historical fiction, detective novels with Mormon settings, biography, and more. New and old, well-known and obscure; all have come under his roving reading and reviewing eye.
Jeff brings to his reviews a careful concern for accuracy, clear sense of plot, and finely tuned sensitivity to authorial style. He consistently, and charitably, recounts authors' successes, while with soft-spoken insight noting areas for improvement. It is part of his understated skill that we come away from each review feeling that we have learned about--and from--an author's work, through Jeff's mediation.