College To Honor Author William Warner, April 18

Scholarship in His Name Recognizes Student Environmental Writing

Chestertown, MD, April 15, 2003 — Washington College will honor William W. Warner, acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Beautiful Swimmers, on Friday, April 18 at 5 p.m. with the dedication in the College's Custom House of a plaque recognizing recipients of the William Warner Scholarship. The $1,000 scholarship was established by friends of the College to be presented to a Washington College junior in recognition of an aptitude for writing about nature and the environment.
“William Warner is one of the nation's most distinguished environmental writers, and he is a great inspiration to our students who aspire in their lives, through word and deed, to protect our world's natural resources,” said Dr. John S. Toll, president of the College. “The William Warner Prize will assist those worthy students who may one day follow in his footsteps.”
Warner has been a Senior Fellow of Washington College since 1985, when he was honored by the College for his classic work on the environment and people of the Chesapeake, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, originally published in 1976. Warner went on to write Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman, in which he studied the environmental impact of ocean-going factory fishing ships in the North Atlantic. In 1999, Warner published Into the Porcupine Cave and Other Odysseys, a book of 10 essays recounting life-shaping events in his growth as a naturalist, from wanderings in the wild with his step-grandfather to adventures in Patagonia and Hawaii. For this he received the Washington College Literary Prize in April of that year. Warner has also written many articles on nature for such journals as The Wilson Quarterly, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, and Atlantic Naturalist.