Former SEJ President Dan Fagin, Author of 'Toms River' Wins Pulitzer

Book chronicled history of pollution and consequences in Jersey Shore town

"Dan Fagin, author of an acclaimed book about industrial pollution in Toms River, was quietly working at his Long Island home Monday when a sudden outburst from his wife broke the silence.

“She screamed from the other room, ‘Dan, you just won a Pulitzer!’” Fagin, 51, recalled about an hour after the Pulitzer Prize board announced this year’s recipients for honors in journalism and the arts. “That was a pretty amazing moment.”

Fagin, a New York University professor and former environmental reporter for Newsday, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for “Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation,” which recounts the decades of chemical waste dumping in Toms River and the attempts to tie that pollution to a nearby cancer cluster."

Russ Zimmer reports for the Asbury Park Press April 14, 2014.

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