English Professor Lesley Brill of Detroit is one of five recipients of WSU Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Awards. The award is for his book John Huston's Filmmaking.

The award consists of a citation, engraved plaque and unrestricted grant of $2,500.

"I've been very interested in John Huston for a decade or so because he is such a wonderful storyteller," Brill said. "He's a thoughtful and humane commentator who understands human frailty and mortality without being discouraged."

He cites Huston's last film, The Dead, as one of his best. Brill also has studied Alfred Hitchcock and his scholarly book, The Hitchcock Romance: Love and Irony in Hitchcock's Films, was published in 1988.

Brill joined Wayne State in 1989 after serving on the University of Colorado and Middlesex Community College (New Jersey) faculties and as a visiting lecturer at the Universite Paul Valery in Montpellier, France, and the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.

He has received a number of awards including the Kayden Faculty Book Manuscript Prize from the University of Colorado, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a Colorado Council on Research and Creative Work Faculty Fellowship and the Leslie A. Marchand Essay Award from Rutgers University.