[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we are getting ready to start the next program. so i ask the room to be as quiet as possible. to begin with, welcome to 35th t fest sponsored by the south planning board and also a special thank you no our sponsors for their generous support this year, especially win trust as our programming sponsor, robert r. mccormick

foundation, alpha wood fungs, the tribune, 3l real estate and c-span book-the program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time for a q & a session, we ask you to step up to the microphones in the center of the room and speak clearly into the microphone. please silence all cellphones and if you're going to take photographs during the presentation, you turn off all flash. with that said, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, shannon of wbez chicago. [applause] >> i'm really lucky to get to introduce alex today. he has been reporting from country's heartland for decade. written four books including the 18991 book, there nor children

here, which the new york public library select as one of the 150 most important books of the 20th century. he also collaborated on the interrupters, a film about men and women in chicago, who interrupt conflicts before they become vie violent and also hand been heard multiple times on this american life.le he was won two peabodys, the robert f. kent journalism squared the george polk award. i this book is an american summer, love and death in chicago. and that book he reports that over the last two decade, about 14,000 people have been killed and roughly another 60,000 wounded by gunfire. it's kind of number that ick main you mind good blank. but alex makes those numbers personal. his stories unfold under the course of a single summer as he asked what does the staggering violence do to he people who live here. welcome him to the stage with me. [applause]

>> what brought you to this book? >> so, in some ways it see this booking a book end to there nor children here, which i wrote nearly 30 yearsing and and that book chronicled two boys growing up in public housing, and i remember my very first time in the project, it was in the mid-'80s and i was visiting with the older of the two boys, lafayette, 12 years old, and the first -- i felt this deep sense of shame. you walk into the public housing, the conditions are so distresseds i thought how could i not know. it's a mile and a half fromty then office. but it met lafayette, kid without much emotion and affect, and as i sat there, i began to think he just gotten hardened to everything he experiencement and i remember he told me about a boy, a bit older than him, just a week earlier had been shot in a gang battle and died in the stairwell outside if building.

remember sitting there, this flat affect, not fully -- i'm not proud to admit this, not fully believing him and i remember he physically grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me out to the steps to get me to believe, and some ways think of there are no children here is this effort to get people to believe, so sort of feel that sense of shame and anger that i felt, but what was viking story striking that many kids who stay in touch with, and automatic consecutive them were killed not laugh fate yet or farrell, and i was just struck by the stub been persistence of the -- stub bon persistence of the violence. the numbers are stagger and we have completely underestimated the impact of violence on the spirit of individuals and the spirit of community, and i remember in the wake of newtown and the wake of parkland, after the horrible tragedies, we were ask all the right questions, not the least of which is how does a community, an individual move

forward with this burden on their shoulders. we don't ask those questions, in corners of the cities where the carnage has become routine. >> you make very specifickings in your book you don't discuss policy, and you don't wrestle with how are we -- what are the policy solutions, and instead you choose to tell person stories. why did you make that choice. >> one public policy is not my bailiwick. i'm the first to admit that. also feel that the truth of the matter is if anybody thinks they know what works, they're lyingment we have ideas but have not figure it out and it's still with us if deeply believe in the power of story. we are told not