Virginia Prewett

Virginia Prewett (1919 – April 7, 1988) was a U.S. journalist whose writing focused on Latin American affairs.

Biography

Virginia Prewett was born in Gordonsville, Tennessee, in 1919.[1][2][3] She spent her teenage years living in Spain,[3] then studied at Cumberland University, the University of Toulouse, and New York University.[1][4]

In the 1940s, after beginning her career as a reporter at the Nashville Tennessean and Lebanon Banner, she became a foreign correspondent in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico for the Chicago Sun and Sun-Times, with her writing widely syndicated through the publication's news service.[1][2][4] She also worked briefly on Latin American issues for the International Rescue Committee in the late '40s.[1]

Prewett went on to cover Latin America on a freelance basis for a variety of publications, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, New Republic, Herald Tribune, Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, and Washington Times.[1][4] From 1959 into the 1960s, she wrote a syndicated North American Newspaper Alliance column.[1] Then, in the '60s and '70s, she wrote a column for the Washington Daily News.[1] After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1966, she spent 18 years producing "The Hemisphere Hotline," a newsletter focusing on inter-American affairs.[1]

She was the author of three books, beginning with Reportage on Mexico (1941).[1][3][5] This was followed by The Americas and Tomorrow in 1944.[4][6] In the early 1950s, Prewett temporarily left journalism and attempted to establish a farm in the forests of Brazil.[4][7] This experience resulted in her 1953 memoir Beyond the Great Forest.[4][7]

For her coverage of Latin America, she received a Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 1964.[2][4]

Prewett, described by some as a conservative journalist, was a co-founder of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba.[4][8][9] She was honored for her work by the Brazilian and Guatemalan governments, for her opposition to Juan Perón and Fidel Castro, respectively.[1][4]

In 1949, she married William R. Mizelle, becoming Virginia Prewett Mizelle, but she continued to write under her maiden name.[1][4]

She died in 1988 at age 69.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Virginia Prewett Mizelle, Newsletter Publisher, Dies". The Washington Post. 1988-04-09. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2024-05-07.
  2. ^ a b c "Writer: End Race Feud". The Nashville Tennessean. 1968-05-26.
  3. ^ a b c Ball, Lamar Q. (1942-02-20). "Latins Admire Cordell Hull, Writer Says". The Atlanta Constitution.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Miss Prewett To Address Grads". The Daily News-Journal. 1968-05-24.
  5. ^ Hale, Martha (1941-04-16). "Mexico Up and Doing". Nashville Banner.
  6. ^ Bierck, Harold A. (1944-12-01). "Review: The Americas and Tomorrow , by Virginia Prewett". Pacific Historical Review. 13 (4): 462–463. doi:10.2307/3634359. ISSN 0030-8684. JSTOR 3634359.
  7. ^ a b "Not-So-Frail 'Second Sex'". The Knoxville Journal. 1953-05-19.
  8. ^ Magill, Frank N. (2013-05-13). The 20th Century A-GI: Dictionary of World Biography, Volume 7. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-59334-5.
  9. ^ D'Haeseleer, Brian (2017-12-15). The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979–1992. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-2512-3.