Marie Claire has won a prestigious Front Page Award from the Newswomen's Club of New York for editor-at-large Abigail Pesta's shocking story "An American Tragedy." The story, which won in the Magazine Features category, describes the chilling trend of "honor killings" in America, whereby a male relative kills a sister, daughter, or wife for "shaming" the family. The practice, which has deep roots in the tribal traditions of the Middle East and Asia, has come stateside.
Pesta's story zooms in on the life of a beautiful 20-year-old Arizona woman named Noor Almaleki, whose father ran over her in his Jeep Cherokee in a suburban parking lot in Phoenix. The reason: She refused to marry an Iraqi man in her father's homeland. Noor's father, who fled to Mexico City and then London, is now in jail back in Arizona, awaiting trial. In jailhouse phone conversations with his wife, he justified killing his daughter as a matter of "Iraqi honor."
Other Front Page Award winners included Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times for Reporter of the Year, Amy Fine Collins of Vanity Fair for Cultural Criticism, and Amy Chozick of The Wall Street Journal for Newspaper Beat Reporting, among others.
Image: Noor Almaleki, killed by her father in Phoenix.
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