Melissa L. Sevigny is a winner in the 2019-20 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, taking the gold place in the Adventure Travel category for “The Wild Ones” in The Atavist Magazine. The annual competition is sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Winners of the awards, the most prestigious in the field of travel journalism, were announced October 16, 2020, at the annual conference of SATW, the premier professional organization of travel journalists and communicators. This year’s gathering was a virtual event.

The competition drew 1,299 entries and was judged by faculty at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. This year, the SATW Foundation presented 99 awards in 26 categories and more than $21,000 in prize money to journalists. The awards are named for Lowell Thomas, acclaimed broadcast journalist, prolific author and world explorer during five decades in journalism.

In honoring Sevigny’s “remarkable re-creation” of Lois Jotter and Elzada Clover’s 1938 expedition down the Grand Canyon, the judges said: “Her chronological narrative is full of colorful details and used tension and foreshadowing. The story also showed that women could face danger as well as the men.”