Christopher Hewitt Award

The Christopher Hewitt Award is an annual literary award given each June by A&U magazine for writing that addresses or relates to HIV/AIDS.[1] One award is given in each of four categories: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama. Awards were first given in 2013.[2] The winners for 2013 were Lisa Sandlin (fiction), Dorothy Alexander (poetry), Terry Dugan (creative nonfiction), and Evan Guilford-Blake (drama).[3]

A&U (originally, Art & Understanding) was established in 1991 as a response to the ongoing loss of members of the creative community due to HIV/AIDS[4] and as a forum for documenting their work. Today, the nonprofit magazine focuses on a variety of aspects of the global pandemic—including advocacy, prevention, and care—in addition to literature and the arts.[5] Notable artists, activists, and writers are interviewed and featured in each issue. Examples include Anjelica Huston, Janet Jackson, Tony Kushner, George Takei, and Lupe Ontiveros.

The award is named for Christopher Hewitt, who served as A&U's first Literary Editor. Born in Worcestershire, England, Hewitt immigrated to the United States in 1974. His poems and translations appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Advocate, The James White Review, BENT, and in the anthology Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men Tell Their Stories.[6] At the time of his death in 2004 at the age of fifty-eight, he was working on a memoir titled “Brittle Bones,”[7] in part about living with osteogenesis imperfecta.