C.J. Chivers Wins Michael Kelly Award

David Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media Company, announced tonight that C.J. Chivers is this year’s recipient of the Michael Kelly Award. He won for a reconstruction of the 2004 Beslan school siege written for Esquire.

The $25,000 award is given annually to a journalist whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly’s own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. Kelly, who was the editor of two Atlantic Media publications, the Atlantic and National Journal, was killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003.

According to a statement from the award judges, “Chivers produced an extraordinary hour-by-hour account of the school siege that is impossible to put down.