these television companies and more. including comcast. >> are you just thinking of this is a committee center? no it's way more than that. comcast is parted with 1000 committee centers to create wi-fi enabled so students from low income families get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast along these television companies support cspan2 as a public service. >> welcome everybody. we are here for the j anthony lucas pries a project honoring excellence in nonfiction book writing with four awards. i am nick lemmon i am ex dean now faculty member here at columbia journalism school. i'm especially happy to be here because i was, back in 1997 i guess, 25 years ago, part of the founding crew that set up this

program. tony lukas was a wonderful nonfiction writer and reporter. who is not only great at what he did, but also cared a lot about the field. this kind of work is not part of mass culture shall we say. but it is a distinct community of people really care about it, help and support each other. it was very important to tony to be part of that community. he put on with me as sort of his deputy have big conference on nonfiction writing at new york state writers institute in albany and 91 or 92. the time of his death he was the president of the authors guild.

he did as much n as he could possibly do we really pleased this program named after him has become. i never got to know mark he had died by the time we started this program. i gather he was an equally man. i cannot tell you that from experience. people are historians they find

each other in a moment and the late 1990s and come together and build this programr. togeth. it has really been a wonderful experience for everybody and produce a bunch of great events. our partner in this is the nieman foundation at harvard. this event is held alternate years even numbered years is here inei odd-numbered years our partner and running this could not be here tonight.

i should say one, we are not just operating after the fact. it was a very important to tony and to all of us who work on this to understand this would not apply to anybody in this room but sometimes it's hard to get a book written. sometimes you run out of money and so cash, validation and community can be a big help. that describes artwork and progress award just vertically distinctive feature of the lukai prizes. the other thing is seeing the event we put on back in 1991, tony really like to have a conversation among nonfiction

writers. we are all nonfiction writers. we can let our hair down a little bit. i don't think i'm the only one who sometimes feel fiction writers get to be like real writers with the w-uppercase-letter nonfiction writers are subject matter experts. what should be our policy on this? that is not how we think of ourselves. and that was important for tony to create the space where we could talk about what it's really like to do this work. we do this after we can for the awards. so, first i want to thank the judges of these awards. they do, as my t kids would saya ton of work. they are not always short books. and it is wonderful they spend the time to do this out of devotion to nonfiction. the judges who ar' here, i

believe give me if i let you out rachel luis schneider, anthony and julia. can you click stand up and take a bow? [applause] thanks to t the board of the lus prizes and again these are the one so i think are here. if i left you out i am sorry. i'll ask you collectively to stand up and take a bow also. jonathan, shay, sam, and pamela. [applause] we have last year's mark linton history prize winner here with this, william thomas. could you stand up? [applause] and we have mark linton i'm sorry michael linton and lily linton here. we did but they are god heard

they were here. [laughter] and we applaud them and they're very recent absence. the whole family for their ongoing and general support for making these awards possible. we are grateful for their support of the awards and the research grants they give to students in sam freedman's book writing class every year. i think we have some students here this year, but i am not for sure. if so, welcome. and now we will give out the awards. on up. this is abby wright who runs most of the prizes here at the school and she'll give me a hand presenting the awards. okay. the j anthony lucas book prize is presented to a book-length work of narrative nonfiction on a topic of american social or political concern that exemplifies the literary grace commitment to serious to serious research and original

reporting that characterize the distinguished word of the lord's namesake. 10,000-dollar honorary it. this year's judges tracy the chair, jess, julia pastore and thomas williams. this year's winner is all around journalist andrea elliott for her book invisible child poverty, survival utopian and and hope in anamerican city. the investigative reporter for "the new york times" and the recipient of a pulitzer prize in overseas press club award and other honors. a graduate of columbia journalism school. the judge's citation reads it is a force of immersive reporting and meticulous unflinching depiction of intergenerational anamerican poverty. she spent eight years following her subject and her parents and

seven siblings. the new york city homeless shelters welfare offices and ultimately the pennsylvania boarding school that offers the first chance of hope. exemplifying the rest of the tradition, elliott exposes granular textures of daily life with deep empathy the sameness of material want and in the process ofpi paints a sweeping portrait of contemporary american life marked by prejudices and injustices set in motion in the past. this is both the demand and deserves our attention. congratulations. [applause]

[applause] this year's finalist for the book prize is awarded for empire of pain the history of the dynasty. patrick is an author and staff writer at the new yorker. the judge is right in their citation it is a rule of real vn look inside of the rise of one of the most powerful and ruthlessho dynasties in america whose indifference is their actions as enabled by the astronomicalvi wealth and privilege that she opens which reporting and research at the depthre and breadth weaves a wealth of facts, figures, depositions, first-hand interviews, documents and to a harrowing and heartbreakingng experience empire of pain is a

portrait of a public health crisis. one of the most devastating in recent memory as well as the ambitions and insularity of the family at its center. patrick couldn't be here with us tonight but we salute him. [applause] >> the history prize is awardedt annually to a work of history on that best combines intellectual distinction with expression and carries a $10,000 honorary. this year's judges were julia keller, anthony and carrie green ridge. this year's winner is the author for surviving cotton the polish massacre and search for truth. a british author and filmmaker of polish origin and the author of inventing robert r-uppercase-letter with

particular interest in the turbulent period from the 1930s to the cold war ine europe. the judge is right in their citation to this chilly and brutal abstraction of the phrase mass grave, surviving provides an eloquent and crucial clarification of individuals and as 22,000 polish prisoners were murdered in world war ii and buried in a polish forest. for decades, the crime was blamed onas the nazis. as they trace this breath and detail however it proves stalin personally ordered the massacre. the book is part detective story, part historical narrative, part biography of the victims and part moral reckoning with relevance to contemporary conflicts. congratulations. [applause]

this year's finalist for the history prize is the mention of miracles, language, power and alexander grahamat bell's. katie teaches writing at the university of pittsburgh and was raised in a mixed death family. the judge's citation reads a complex and profoundly moving historical saga the invention of miracles is an insightful portrait of the extraordinary life of alexander graham bell as well as retellingg of his decade-long crusade to teach the deaf to speak with their lips and not their hands. relying on the papers into those of his contemporaries as well as diving deeply into the archives

of the community booth focuses on the cultural impact of the work without shining away from the more controversial aspect of the mission. bypassing sign language, interpreting death genealogy and the eugenics before distancing himself from its most radical ideas. superbly written and decidedly subjective, the invention of miracles provides a challenging portrait of an imperfect genius. katie couldn't be with us tonight. on theli topic of american political or social concerns this year's judges were rachel snyder the chair, paul and david. roxana wins the first award for

the murder suicide in the system failure of kids. an independent journalist focused on child protection and the criminal legal systems the judges citation reads tracing the devastating story of the families shocking murder suicide after the children's adoptive mother's drove the entire family off a california cliff as they paint a moving portrait of the lost lives and failed systems. within ever present lens the investigation illuminates the innumerable ways to child welfare agencies failed at these young black children and indicts the way the most vulnerable among us are imperiled by the very systems created to protect them. congratulations, roxana.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> the second works in progress award goes for the sex work and lovepo in america. a reporter at "vanity fair" her reporting from afghanistan has received the south asian journalist associations daniel pearl award. judges citation carefully piecing together the mosaic of the forces that often compels sex work in america today. poverty, neglect, racism, addiction,n, discrimination. john dissects the ways in which women are punished disproportionately for the actions of men. the tireless reporting on the chaotic haphazard world grapples

with the very idea of how we think about sex workers today including not only the stigma around them t but also the very idea of what it means culturally, criminally and sociologically. congratulations. [applause] >> now it's time for the panel discussion which will be led by pamela, a member of the lucas board. she's going to come up. pamela until very recently about a week ago or something was the editor of "the new york times"" book review, which she had done for nine years, is that right? and she oversaw all book

coverage of the times. the former correspondent for the economist, pamela joined the times in 2011 at the children's book editor and is the author of eight books. now she's just starting a career as the times opinion columnist,s i believe two columns so far, she's off to a flying start. don't go here, go there and i will turn it over to you. thanks, everyone. [applause] >> two things before we start. one, i'm not actually going to be checking my phone but i am being texted to your questions on my phone, so that is why i'm holding this. i'm not distracted. and the second thing i just want to say now that i'm allowed to have public opinions, that it is my opinion that it is a good m d right that we take a moment to note that there are four women

winners upne here. [applause] when i joined the book review, only 11 years ago, there were still this sort of background of women writing serious nonfiction. so now it just feels natural and good and just do so. so. congratulations to everyone here. i just want to start off by asking a basic question to each of you and i'm not going to go in order but i'm going to start with the two that have written their books to make it a little bit easier to tell us about the origin story of your book and projectar because i know you started this when you were at the times. >> i want to say i am so incredibly honored to receive this award. i'm sitting in this room with

mentors of mine including sam friedman, whose book i would like to think planted the seed of talking about origins many, many years ago and my daughter is here and my agency and i just know them so much. they are telling me to speak up. thank you for that. so, what i would say about it i've always been drawn to human existence and the narrative of people more than anything else.i i thought that was strange and kind of outrageous.

i called the colleagues and started working the phones to afigure out why this was a bigr story and in a way it was a bigger story because, and that is part of the reason it was such a big story is that it wasn't going away and we were coming up ons half a century after lbj declared war on poverty. and some gains had happened but a lot remained to be done. so just from that many thousands of feet above the ground jump out of the sky i wound up landing finally in the life after a long search and by the time i met her my checklist had gone out the window so it was based on a certain demographic profile that meant maybe she was part latina.

i would have been able to speak spanish. all the things just wound up being kind of background noise because when i met her she grabbed myy heart and felt electrified around her and her family. i felt like these were people whose lives i wanted to know and what i find is if that is the case for me it's going to be the case for the reader so that is how it all began but i never thought that i would have spent this much time as i wound up spending with them. at what point did you say to yourself there's more and there's a book here and i want to do more of that? >> i think that you have to be very much in love because you know it's going to be hard and i

hadn't't fallen in love until then. i don't even remember when the moment was but i do remember picking up the phone and calling tina and saying well you be my agent because the series is running and my phone is off the hook and you said sure. i think it just took possession of me and kept showing me everything i thought i knew. the history i thought i knew and every turn i felt like it was an education in so many new and important issues, so that's why it took as long as it did because i felt i owed it to the

story. i'm assuming you went into this knowing this was going to be of a book but what is the origin of theog project? i think it was originally planted. i don't know if anyone remembers there is a terrible air crash which was when the polish president with many dignitaries was on his way to commemorate the anniversary of the massacre and the plane crashed just outside of setting off a series of echoes of the event that was very powerful and it was at that moment i realized none of my british friends had never heard of it and i started thinking about itth and i wrote another

book and when i was thinking about writing a new book, it took hold of me and actually almost had yet to release me and i'm still living with this legacy and it had taken me on a long journey of research. it was a resurrection because just under 400 survived. they are only associated into victims of the massacre and i really felt i wanted to bring them back as human beings with all of their faults and individual personalities and that was the kind of financial

motivation andnd it sprawled frm there. >> given that there was low awareness of the event did you have to do a lot of persuading to investigate if this should be a book? >> i was in the process of changing it and i wrote to the agents who were interested in representing me and i said something else. then i did the thing that rises. i don't know if it is just me. at the end you say i've got a couple of other ideas. there was this little thing at the end. he e-mailed back and said i'm not interested. i would really likee to see a book so he was very much behind it. one that is a smaller publisher got behind it and that's how it happened. sog i personally didn't have to do a lot of persuading but

perhaps he did. >> so, for roxana, you started off reporting this and when did you decide this should be a book and this is what i want to do? it was a widely reported a story at the time. >> i livee in texas and the wayi got a hold of the story first is that it was a breaking news assignment from the oregonian in portland. i went to find the family of three of the kids involved in the crash and that was a tip that i got from a friend of ours that is in portland so wind and on a day number one and day number two story and i was the only b reporter around. so typically i had done breaking news in new york. i was sort of expecting that. it wasn't like that at all.

i was invited into their home andn immediately was pretty overwhelmed because i had just heard the news of their children who had been removed from their care a decade prior. so i'd written a story about foster care in 2016. like you said it was a prettyt big national story at the time and it felt like there was a cognitive dissonance between whatir i was experiencing with e families and then what was being reported which was focused on the women, very focused on the psychological motivation. it was very true and i felt

there was an equally if not more important narrative about the systems in place that allowed it and enabled it to happen. that wasn't getting looked out t and there was this element. i did a story on the other family and this wasn't done for me. i didn't feel finished with it and that's how i felt like this was one larger story that needed to be told together. hopefully it will soon be. how did you decide to write a book on the subject, how did the

idea comee to you? the m most succinct i am a magazine writer and after i finish a story i never want to talk about the subject ever again. i had done a few stories about sex work and sex trafficking in 2018 and 2019 and i still had a lot of questions left. i figured i could afford to take maybe two months off to look into the subject to see if there's anything there and at the end. i gave myself a week of putting together some kind of proposal or something and instead i spent the week going on hikes.

you do get mail from prison and usually it's like i'm a serial killer looking for a penpal and you think that's usually the case but in this instance. i had written about a prostitution raid and the only reason i subscribed at the end is because normally she never reads the articles but it caught her eye because it was about she was in prison for sex trafficking a minor thathe souns terrible but when you peel back the layers it isn't quite at the

seams. i'm going to ask a question that i think we often ask at this event. the first time that i came to the lucas prize ceremony, bob was one of the winners and we asked or someone asked him about his process and this is where i first learned that he would get dressed and put on a suit and tie and go to his office. i felt like it was something to aspire to. soll here is the process and i will start with you again. what is your writing process like? orwhere do you ride, how do youa work and do you things like paper product is independence, what do you do? download everything and everything gets dumped and then

i create a document of everything i want until it makes sense. everyone can name their favorite app. i love this question. i have to say today i am lucky enough i just found a stationary shop somewhere in greenwich village. i'm obsessed with stationary, not that it plays a part of my process. it does a little bit. i started in the morning i go to

work upstairs in my house. i start and work with scribner that is useful if you are not familiars with it you have a lot of material coming from different sources. i find it helpful looking at things in a nonlinear way. i have to have a coffee. like a symbolic coffee when you work from home it's important to make a dividing line between your working systems and family assistance. i shut my door, have my coffee and then supposedly start work but you show up and do the work every day and you don't wait for inspiration f i've learned you just get on with it. i work allll morning and i'm sue

everyone else will appreciate there are different stages to writing. researching, i can do that all day. starting to write is like pulling teeth. it's awful and i would do almost anything s to avoid it. does thehe fact that you have to go deep into the historical record foror the challenge in terms of language and in terms of the accessibility. >> the nature of the subject

because it was covered up for four decades in eastern europe there was a lot of information about it so actually most of the information before the collapse of communism for 1990 is in london. the institute holds enormous quantities and materials as does the british library so i had to do the research and i learned as an adult. everything post-1990 comes out of poland or russia so i had to go to warsaw. there is an awful lot you can get through the internet nowadays but i wanted to find fresh research so i went back to the primary sources in poland so

it was a kind of two-pronged thing but an enormous chunk of the researcher was done in lond. >> and the material -- >> it was opened in the 1990s. i don't speak russian, so i read it all in polish. a lot of it amazingly has astonishing quantities. i only had to go to poland for a very obscure things that hadn't found its way into publications. >> i'm going to skip to you because i u want to say that if you are not using scribner this is what will get you over the finish line.

the idea that i had in my head about the process of writing the book was very much not the way that it actually went. i had a 5-year-old and we were all at home for a year and a half, so i ended up doing these right trips to the hill country so i would go to these guesthouses on the ranch. on whatever chapter i was going to be working on and then i would go and just in four days usually i did it because i literally just couldn't get the brain space that i needed to do the writing.

you could work all day and make yourself like an egg and not talk to anyone. so i feel like maybe and now i've spoiled myself because it is very nice to write alone. >> what was your process? >> the mom of two children, single mom with a devoted coparent i could devote to myself entirely, i very much related to what you just said and i feel about time a certain almost kind of greed like i'm jealously guarded. and obsessively trying to squeeze everything i can out of

that solitude because interruption for me is the enemy of process. and children as we know when i have my kids i woke up very early usually i try to crank out two hours of work before they woke up and they tended to wake up because they've grown up with this. that got me into this rhythm b f early and this at this discipline. i will also say it was very early. for meme i could never see this after having kids. it rewired my brain forever. i could be hung over. it doesn't matter. at 6:00 i'm wide awake. it is what it is. but i loved hearing you all speakec about your process becae i didn't think of myself as a writerha but as a re- writer.

the first words you put on the page it's an invitation to kind of start. and there'' so much it's not one process and it's not in the same day so in terms of carving out time, my project was very much a balancing act if you could call it that. real-time events that i didn't c have any control over constantly happening that i had to stay on top of, which is a deep emergence of reporting and they were sometimes in battle and i had to learn to toggle between themem so then from the outsidet looks like an extremely very, very organized process almost to the point of t ocd but then you

see that it's a complete mess. so i was always looking for things and trying to figure out where in the pile but i did have a lot of systems in place. and i think i also depend a lot on the different mediums. i don't trust my memory so i work a lot with video and audio and the people i wrote about what share those things with me as well. they would take video if i wasn't there so that helped to bring the writing alive if i hadn't been around in a while. but i think like going back to process, there is a morning brain and afternoon brain. id like my early morning and my late evening and then everything else is fine. basically -- there is a lot to say about the process. another process and a good question for you because you are writing about a real person and her family and they are continuingiv to live and their

lives are going on and your story is continuing. at what point did you say okay i need to stop here. >> i can tell you very specifically that it happened on three occasions and all three endings are in the book. i thought the book ended -- i thinkl i knew when i witnessed the final scene at the end i felt this kind of just whole body like okay but the relationship with the material and the people, it doesn't end. it stays inside. i feel like i have a new habit with this story for the rest of my life in a way.

of course it's different once you've released it into the world. for one thing you get to enjoy the responses. i was on a first name basis in theirea lives for years and suddenly they felt that part of the life of the reader is a revelation i want to stay with both of you for a minute because you are writing with children and about children and about at risk children and balancing those are human stories with larger systemic issues. i'm interested in getting a sense of how you decide to balance those two big subjects two different kinds of storytelling in your work.

and we will start with you. >> that is a good question. i think my brain thinks of things in a systemic way. as i said when i met the family, first i thought this is definitely a child welfare story. and i had l learned some reportg skills of how to access information related to the child welfare stories which information can be hard to come by because almost everything is confidential. that is what confused the specific cases, so that is like a little puzzle for me. and i got that sort of that is the easy part in a way. the hardest part for me was the

emotional intensity of the work and the witnessing of the grief and feelings which were like i felt like i would tell my urfriends i had a part-time job figuring out how to deal with this kind of work. so for me the individual stories are very clear because the emotional beat of the story and my sources and experiences felt very intuitive but it was a lot more difficult to do that work. the kind of systemic reporting which you can get angry when you're looking at a systems that are not operating well and that can be the digging and the getting mad, like that's very sustaining and it's a different

aspect to go into the sort of emotional to sit and win and process people's grief. >> i'm going to turn to you because you also talk about a lot of a dysfunctional systems d larger issues and your book explores so many different layers. we talk a little bit about the balance of those issues and all the things you just mentioned. that's why i love the subject and as well as topics we are having the reckonings around and i think that is also the challenge of the book as well

there's a lot going on and occasionally someone pulled me out. what i find super compelling about sex work is that it's not just about sex work but it also happens to be about gender class and one of the more themes i'm exploring in the section. but the fact anti-prostitution legislation infected and anti-immigration legislation. they are often anti-women and. it's a prominent display were a

bunch of massage parlors were shot up. it's interesting in the early hours of following that event i don't know if it is an enlightenment but there's a lot of desire to figure out and supplies it could be all of the above. >> you also write that some people can be posted to think victims both. >> that is a revelation that came to me by way of my time in afghanistan. in a place like afghanistan it really matters if you are a civilian or some other category you can live and die by them and

then i come to america and realize our society is structured that much differently. the problem is it's ad adjudicated in the legal system and it incentivizes. that is what is fueling the rhetoric if you identify yourself as a victim they came out saying we are not going to prosecute and oddly enough if you talk to that office they call it the bottom problem and

the second is the bottom and it's often the women and it is often the bottom that ends up going to prison because she's often the one that is grooming and p recruiting so in this instance the bottom becomes a perpetrator but also a victim as well and there's's no room for that kind of nuance. >> in contrast you did a kind of reporting in that you went undercover and worked in a strip club. in what ways did that experience in form or change the views of your subject and how you go about writing the i book? >> i haven't quite figured out how to unpack that.

i guess i was struck by, clearly i am still processing it but one thing that i learnedno is that it's you can have a sort of public facing version of yourself that has good politics and you are coherent and all that but then i think it is this all the place where things become incoherent and i was just so forced to be in my body in a wayma that i think often i find ways of avoiding that through this course or whatever but in the end i was working and those facts are incapable in a country that hates women of color. >> your book obviously the subject have been a long time ago. it's historical but impossible

not to think about in terms of the parallels. do you see anything between the invasion of ukraine between stalin and putin? >> i think there are inevitable parallels. i'm reluctant to draw to them directlyly but there are things you can see there is a very distinct continuum about the methodology of the manipulation of information and use of outright lies and false narratives and the part of a continuum. putin was a kgb colonel and behind that is incredibly strikinglyn similar.

when people have asked me why should we care about the massacre which is the general context of the brutality of the century you are talking about the victims. why should we care about it more than the other crimes the voice of which there were millions and millions and one that was worth considering is this perpetuated lie over for decades a false narrative was maintained complete with fake history books, monuments, witnesses, erasure of truth, intimidation, so many things that a strike accord and when you look at the

case it becomes less effective because they are easier to uncover and then just in terms of the things we are hearing obviously this was live news at the moment and things that were fully evidenced and processes that are levels of brutality and things. one of the reflections that i have had since i found it very difficult since the invasion i thought about it a lot. i'm not sure that i could have written this book now because i felt i thinknk in order lots of people ask why are you writing a book about the massacre it sounds so depressing why are you focused on this and so for me it was a kind of resurrection of bearing witness and honoring the

people that he spent so long trying to uncover the truth but part of it was to some extent safely in the past and it doesn't seem that way now. >> having successfully finished the book, i wonder if i could ask you one last question and it's a question on behalf of roxana and this is for both of you if you had to give advice to these two authors working to complete their books, what would you say, what is most hopeful keeping youu going on the projet is and what would you say to the person that is knee-deep in the project? a couple of quick things. >> first of all, trust in the process. it is knowing that you know where your book is going better

than anyone else and this leads to the other thing i wish i had learned early on which i think it is especially relevant to someone who is midstream. when you are midstream, you are vulnerable i think more van at the beginning of the book when it's exciting and new at the end when you are on the finish line. you are vulnerable i think to the perceptions of others what are they thinking and the dreaded question that you get if you actually go out and there was probably a two year stretch where i didn't even go out but you had a dinner party and words come out. so how was your book? you don't even let them finish that question because it leads to doubts that are very corrosive in the process and i think what you really want is to never make major reporting or editing decisions from the weakness or r a position of strength. it feels like you just won a

grand and you know what you're doing but you're trying to figure out howow to pay the ren. so those are all hard advice iso follow but i would tell that to myself again the next time around. >> i had no idea. in the process that is relatively easier than starting the process and completing it and for me the focus was about the writing and i'm endlessly chipping away at it and i suppose there comes the point that you just have to stall and hand over to somebody and let them look at it and let it go. there's also the inability to talke about projects to people outside of it. it's incredibly difficult to talk about something when you are in the middle of it and

trying to find a short three this is a practical piece of advice, not a v kind of existential one, ae short versin when people say what are you working on you can say without driving them insane because i've been p known to do that before your very obsessed with something and you can't encapsulate it in a coupleeen of sentences. it's the kind of elevated pitch. we were getting on the same bus home and she was very sweet and seemed genuinely interested and asked me what i was writing about. i was still talking when we got off the bus. she got off with me and was like you know and i'm halfway through the story of stalin and these very l serious things. very nice to bump into you.

fresh air being able to talk about. your book. >> i could ask all of q you so many questions about the content of your book and about the process of writing them, but i want to give the audience a chance to ask questions. so, ifif there is a microphone right there in the middle if anyone has questions for the authors, please feel free. we've exhausted you. and a resume audience can also send questions. so any questions that come in that way. >> thank you and congratulations all of you and thank you this has been a great conversation. i had a question about navigating the publishing deal

any advice you would have for someone who was interested in having someone or lessons learned in terms of how did you get one, getting an agent for any of the students that might be interested in writing a book. a few bits of advice on that would be great. thank you. >> may be the dealmakers should speak first. >> as far as advice goes to people that would like to get a deal, you know, i think i was flying blind of for a good portion of it so i got my agent. i think i wrote several stories ahead of my book proposal and that was helpful because it i

did a lot of reporting before hand but i also realized that it was all onean thing in my brain and that helped me a lot. i do think your agent is super important in the process and so the inquiry process and also just i think doing a lot of reporting on the front end made getting the deal easier and made writing the book easier because i did have a sense of where i was going with it when i sold it. >> i was going to say the most important thing is getting a good agent and my agent is here but it feels like obviously how do you get a good agent and get good work so there is that a

trick but writing a few pieces to see if you even like it is a good thing to do just to test it out and having the conviction that it's ahe good story and in some ways the extraordinary validation of a book like that doesn't matter that much and i think when you are younger that stuff is important but if it's really good like someone's going to buy it at some point just trusting in the process and that it's going to come together. think a bookd i isn't just something you back into. it's something that you must write. that's what makes it the best project and having a great agent i'm so blessed to have with tina is not just about having a brilliant person to help kind of

get you the best deal. oit's about early on creating a community around your book which consists of you, your agent, your editor hopefully in a couple key readers that will lift the work basically from its inception to its final stage and help shepherd through and that is essential to my editor holding the lantern for me when the field would have been completely dark like you're going to make it, you're going to make it so i think knowing that i could not not to write this book and that's important especially if you are coming out of school hopefully you will have taken some classes so you have some there but it's an enthusiasm that is important to

the process if you know you must write the book. that makes up for the lack of experience potentially. >> you have to be very prepared. i think it is important to understand that a project that you committed to forng the book has to be something you are prepared to live with for several years because even if you think it is going tosn be a short thing if it is a term be soonship you have to passionate about it that you can't not do it and also the art of nonfiction writing is persuading people to be interested in something they didn't know they were going to be interested in so you have to be able to carry that. i can't speak to the process but i was in the process of changing an agent and i deliberately approached an agent that had a background in nonfiction and i found that so helpful along the way because he gave so much to helping put the proposal

together. he helped in editing and was useful to haveve another person you could bounce ideas off of that you trust. >> other questions for the audience. >> i am a student and fellow at the department. thank you all for being here. i have a question about the reporting process and how you build your confidence and maintain throughout the reporting and writing that you are the right person to be tackling whatever subject or story it is when you are reporting and writing about a community that you yourself do not belong to. it's a very onpoint. our job is to be very, very

driven and ambitious and at the same time insecure about our lack of knowledge. we are there as students, we are there to learn. i that is what i love most about this job is that i get to learn about all these other worlds. i've been asked before what right do i have to tell the story and what i would say is i don't see it as my right. i see it as my duty as a journalist to show up forrt the most important stories of my time and this is one of them and every journalist of every background should be trying to understand these issues, delving into them in some manner and of course we bring blind spots but it's not our job to stay in our own sort of demographic or other

cultural labels like just to stay in my lane means maybe i will be able to write about other women like me in their 40s from the east coast that have one immigrant parent and a very limited subject. ..pe shortcomings and potentially our own blind spots. it's being very, very open with the people you're writing writing about having it be a conversation. talking about these things with them for many years. it's front and center to our process.

as also we have in common. >> i want to say i think it's really good to question where they were the right person to tell the story. that's a good part of the process. i think if you don't, your blind spots it's good to say why me, i definitely did a lot. and i think part of it was i was making relationships for my sources. those relationships aree deepening, i was feeling their stories were not being told in the way they should be told. in my case the story itself was big nationall news.

until i felt like here i am in this place where i have the ability to tell their story and no one is telling that. but i i also think like having that back-and-forth with your self is an exercise in interrogating your own blind spot, where you come from, what your perspective is, i met this all really important to the work as a whole. >> is in him and went to respond? >> were not debate today. because my book is about it's a long meditation on consent and as mentioned really important is getting active consent from the subjects. i'll post i will remember but aristotle talks about yes are

very smart. [laughter] experience is very important. as well as doing the work i'm doing the hard work. doing the research and making very persuasive argument. i think about the book as a project beyond my file that's what i'm thinking about. doing those three things. and i think similar to what you mentioned as well that is a duty and maybe actually more so for me i think about it as a real privilege and i am contributing something to this community that's given me this tremendous honor of letting me into people's lives. and i think ifat you leave with gratitude and curiosity that is a good thing.

>> i'm not sure i can comment on it particularly. folks we are actually out of time. i want to thank all of you for the opportunity to talk with you about your book. and everyone else here on the board, the judges, to urge all of you especially the students that are hereto and watching to hear these books and for all these great. thank you all. [applause] [applause] >> american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 1:10 p.m. eastern on that one her 50th anniversary of yellowstone national park, native wyoming resident bob

richard talks about the history of the park, tours for 40 years. at 2:00 p.m. on the presidency president dwight eisenhower grandson david author of the book going home to glory a memoir with dwight d eisenhower in 1969 talks about leadership in the military and this present and the forces that shaped him for exploring the american story. what american history tv saturdays on cspan2 find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >> weekends on the cspan2 art feast. every saturday american history tv and on sundays book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors bridge funding for cspan2 companies at television companies and more including charter communications.

ardor is invested billions building infrastructure, upgrading technology, empowering opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications along these television companies support cspan2 as a public service. x now on about books but the focus on one aspect of the public in process we can have an enormous impact on whether a book flies off the shelf or it will languish. it's the world of book reviews. joining us now paula's longtime editor-in-chief of the washington monthly publication. where do you come up with the idea of creating an award for book reviews? >> my wife