Jonathan Gleason, NWP 2022, is inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize judged by Meghan O’Rourke. Yale University Press will publish his first book, Field Guide to Falling Ill, in 2025. 

Meghan O'Rourke, editor of The Yale Review, wrote: “I’m delighted to select Field Guide to Falling Ill as the inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize. In precisely observed lyrical essays, Gleason probes the social construction of illness and modern medicine, examining the human realities behind the science and policy of disease. The result is a layered, reflective, and unusually poised debut, one that will resonate with anyone who has contended with illness.”

Gleason's essay “Proxemics,” contained in the book and first published in Colorado Review, was also chosen by Wesley Morris to appear in the Best American Essays (2024).