With this years lukas fridays ceremony our program is a little bit of the introduction and i hope an interesting discussion with our three winners and then with more celebration to come so thanks for all of you to share this part of the evening with us first i will tell you about this prize is you may not be as acquainted with it as we are but this is a prize in memory of tony lucas who inspired my generation the first time we started to taken college what we wanted to write and our generation grew up with a narrative nonfiction searching about social issues and Common Ground so when he passed a lot of people were inspired by his life to create this prius this is where the enterprise began it has expanded gradually for the Senior Executive in the netherlands at the time of his death in the 1997 as a reporter of serious history his children established the prize as part of a the lucas fridays project and his family has generally underwritten the prize since the inception in 1998 his wif