flying fox press

Ann Cottrell Free was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1916. A graduate of Barnard College, she became the first woman Washington correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, Newsweek, and The Chicago Sun, where she covered First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and wartime-Washington. After the war she served in China as a special correspondent for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and in Europe for the Marshall Plan. She later wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance and was a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, other newspapers and syndicates. In 1963 she received the Albert Schweitzer Medal from the Animal Welfare Institute for her investigative animal reporting. The publication of Forever the Wild Mare brought her many other honors, including the Dodd, Mead Boys’ Life Writing Award. She initiated the establishment of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and presented testimony on numerous animal protection issues to Congressional committees. She was also a founder of the Friends of the National Zoo. She authored Animals, Nature and Albert Schweitzer, Since Silent Spring: Our Debt to Albert Schweitzer and Rachel Carson and a volume of poetry, No Room, Save in the Heart. She received the Rachel Carson Legacy Award in 1988 and in 1996 was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. Her oral histories are in the collections of Columbia University and the National Press Club. In 2004 she died at the age of 88 in Washington, D.C. A year later, the National Press Club Ann Cottrell Free Animal Reporting Award was established to inspire and encourage other journalists to follow in her footsteps. More information can be found at AnnCottrellFree.org