Surgam

The Philolexian Foundation

In service to the Philolexian Society of Columbia University · Founded MDCCCII

The Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement and Improvement of The Public Discourse

The Society's most prestigious award, presented at the Annual Dinner before Geezers and students in honor of a body of work that has, in the Society's estimation, defined a literary life.

Recipients are chosen by the Society's Foundation Board in consultation with the student Society. The award is honorific rather than monetary; the prize is hearing one's name read aloud to the Society and being kept in the company of one's predecessors.

Cadence

Periodic, by selection

Presented

At the Annual Dinner

Eligibility

That individual whose published works evince a genius, a fluency, and a felicity of expression worthy of the very name our Society bears — being, in the elder and most exact construction of the term, a lover of discourse.

Prize

The recognition itself, attended with such complimentary libations at the Annual Dinner as the recipient may reasonably consume.

Recent Recipients

YearRecipientFor
2026 Anelise ChenSo Many Olympic Exertions · Clam Down: A Metamorphosis Novelist and essayist; columnist on mollusks for the Paris Review.
2025 Rachel CohnNick & Norah's Infinite Playlist · Dash & Lily's Book of Dares Young-adult novelist; co-author with David Levithan of the series adapted for screen and Netflix.
2024 John McWhorterOur Magnificent Bastard Tongue · Nine Nasty Words Linguist; columnist at The New York Times; host of Lexicon Valley. Honorary lifetime member of the Society.*
2023 Christopher BookerSpecial Correspondent, PBS NewsHour Weekend Lecturer of International and Public Affairs, Columbia SIPA; special correspondent and producer for PBS.
2022 Roosevelt MontásRescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English, Columbia University; former director of the Core Curriculum.
2019 Paul AusterThe New York Trilogy · Moon Palace · The Brooklyn Follies · 4 3 2 1 Novelist, memoirist, translator, and screenwriter; recipient of the Prix Médicis étranger and honors from the Academy of Arts and Letters, PEN, and the French Republic (Commandeur, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres).
2017 Barbara J. FieldsRacecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (with Karen E. Fields) Columbia historian of the American South; on-screen commentator for Ken Burns's The Civil War. Acceptance speech (PDF) →
2016 Richard HowardUntitled Subjects · Alone With America · translator of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal Former President of the Philolexian Society; poet, critic, and translator; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1970); National Book Award for Translation (1983); MacArthur Fellow (1996); Poet Laureate of New York State (1993–95); longest-serving Poetry Editor of The Paris Review.
2015 Jennifer Finney BoylanShe's Not There: A Life in Two Genders · Long Black Veil · Good Boy Novelist, memoirist, and President of PEN America; longtime New York Times opinion columnist.
2014 Carol GuessPoet & prose writer Poet, novelist, and Professor of English at Western Washington University.
2013 Greta GerwigLady Bird · Little Women · Barbie Writer-director; four-time Academy Award nominee across directing and screenwriting; her first three solo features each received Best Picture nominations.
2012 Eric FonerReconstruction · The Fiery Trial · The Second Founding DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia; Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Lincoln Prize laureate.
2011 Jacques BarzunFrom Dawn to Decadence · The House of Intellect Historian and former Philolexian Society president; knighted in the French Legion of Honor at age 83, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at age 96, and finally grabbed the brass ring of the Philolexian Award at age 103.
2010 Wm. Theodore de BarySources of Chinese Tradition · Sources of Japanese Tradition · Sources of Korean Tradition Class of 1941; John Mitchell Mason Professor and Provost Emeritus of Columbia; founder of Columbia's Committee on Asia and the Middle East; longtime steward of the Core Curriculum; National Humanities Medal (2013).
2009 John R. MacArthurPublisher, Harper's Magazine Class of 1978; publisher of Harper's Magazine since 1983; author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War and The Selling of “Free Trade”.
2008 Lydia DavisThe Collected Stories of Lydia Davis · translator of Proust and Flaubert Barnard '70; Man Booker International Prize (2013); MacArthur Fellow (2003); a foundational figure in the American short-short-story form and a translator whose Proust and Flaubert became the standard editions.
2007 Jason EpsteinFounder of Anchor Books; co-founder of The New York Review of Books and the Library of America Class of 1949; the publisher who invented the American trade paperback (Anchor, 1953), co-founded The New York Review of Books during the 1963 newspaper strike, and launched the Library of America (1979); National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award (2001).
2006 Robert GirouxEditor of Berryman, Merton, O'Connor, Bishop, and Lowell Class of 1936; former Philolexian President; the “G” of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; the editor whose acquisitions defined mid-century American letters (and whose 1955 exit from Harcourt, after they declined Salinger, brought The Catcher in the Rye and much else to FSG).
2002 John HollanderRhyme's Reason · Types of Shape · Powers of Thirteen Class of 1950; Sterling Professor of English at Yale; MacArthur Fellow; Yale Younger Poets selection; the prosody manual working poets actually keep on the shelf.

Submit a Nomination

* McWhorter's acceptance speech, a philological history of the phrase most useful in affirming or opposing a debate resolution, delivered with the scholarly care one might otherwise reserve for the Rosetta Stone, earned a standing ovation, and, by unanimous acclaim of the assembled Geezers, honorary lifetime membership in the Society.