tony lucas was a wonderful nonfiction writer and reporter who was 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's a distinct community of people who really care about it and are devoted to it and help and support each other and it was very important to tony to be part of that community he put on with me as his sort of deputy a big conference on nonfiction writing at new york state writers institute in albany back in 91 or 92 called telling the truth at the time of his death. he was the president of the author's guild he just, you know did as much as he could possibly do not just for his own work, but for other people who do this work, and and i think he would be really pleased to see what this program named after him has become i never got to know mark linton because he had died i think by the time we started this program i got to know his widow and his his children who are here very well and i gather he was an equally remarkable man, but i can't sort of tell you about it from experience and he had a passion for historical writing especially historical writing that's done. for people who? are historians and people who aren't historians too, which does not describe all historical writing and it was just a wonderful coming together to have the morning lucas family in the morning linton family find each other at a moment in the late 1990s and come together and build this program together. it's it's really been a wonderful experience for everybody and and and produce a bunch of great events and winners our partner in this is the naaman foundation at harvard. this event is held alternate years, i guess in even numbered years. it's here in an odd numbered years. it's in cambridge at the neiman foundation our partner in running this and marie lipinski. who's the head of the neiman foundation couldn't be here tonight, but you know, i want to thank her and everyone there for the role they have in in this program. so i want to just set up the awarding of the awards and then we'll have a discussion i should say. two other things about this this particular prize program one. we are somewhat distinctive among journalism awards in that we're not just operating after the fact it was very important to tony and to all of us who work on this to understand. i mean this wouldn't apply to anybody in this room, but sometimes it can be hard to get a book written and sometimes you run out of money and and so a little cash and validation and community can be a big help and it's it's this that describes our work in progress award, which is a particularly distinctive feature of the lucas prizes. and the other thing is as you know seen in the event we put on back in 91 tony really like to have a conversation among nonfiction writers, you know, we're all nonfiction writers so we can like let our hair down a little bit and i don't think i'm the only one who sometimes feels like fiction writers get to be like real writers with a capital w and nonfiction writers are subject matter experts, you know, like what's what should be our policy on this and that's not how we think of ourselves and so it was important to tony to create a sort of space where we could talk about what it's really like to do this work and we'll do that after we after we confer the awards. so first i want to thank the judges of these awards they do as my kids would say a -- ton of work because these are not always short books and and it's wonderful that they spend the time to do this out of devotion to nonfiction the judges who are here, i believe and forgive me if i've left you out or rachel louise snyder anthony dipama and julia pastor. so can you like stand up and take a bow? thanks to the board of the lucas prizes. and again, these are the ones i think are here and if i've left you out. i'm sorry and ask you collectively to stand up and take about also jonathan alter shay earhart, sam friedman and pamela paul. we have last year's mark clinton history prize winner here with us william thomas. can you stand up in? and we have mark linton and i'm sorry michael linton and lily linton here. can you all we did but they're gone. okay. well they were here and we applaud them in their very recent absence and the whole family for their ongoing and general support for making these awards possible. we're grateful for their support of the awards and for the research grants, they give two students in sam friedman's book writing class every year. i think we have some students here this year, but i don't know for sure. but if if so, welcome, and now we'll give out the awards. abby come 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 research and original reporting that characterized the distinguished work of the awards namesake the prize carries a 10,000 honorarium. this year's judges bruce tracy the chair jess bruder julia pastor and thomas chatterton williams. this year's winner is author and journalist andrea elliott for her book invisible child poverty survival and hope in an american city. andrea is an investigative reporter for the new york times and the recipient of a pulitzer prize a george polk award and overseas press club award and other honors most importantly. she's a graduate of columbia journalism school. the judges citation reads invisible child is a tour de force of of reporting and meticulous and unflinching depiction of intergenerational american poverty. andrea elliott spent eight years following her subject 11 year old dasani and her parents is seven siblings in and out of new york city homeless shelters court schools welfare offices and ultimately the pennsylvania boarding school that offers the first chance of hope exemplifying the best of the lucas tradition elliott exposes the granular texture of daily life with deep empathy the punishing sameness of material want and in the process paints sweeping portrait of contemporary american life still marked by prejudices and injustices set in motion in the past. as the number of homeless americans continues to rise. this is a book that demands and deserves our attention. congratulations, andrea. here to assist others will join you in a minute. this year's finalist for the j. anthony lucas book prizes awarded to journalists and author patrick. radden kiefer for empire of pain the secret history of the sackler dynasty. patrick is an author and a staff writer at the new yorker. the judges right in their citation that empire's pain is a revelatory. look inside the rise of one of the most powerful and ruthless dynasties in america whose indifference toward the consequences of their actions is enabled by the astronomical wealth and privilege. that's shield them with reporting and research of impressive depth and breadth patrick gratin kief weaves. the facts figures depositions firsthand interviews and original documents into a harrowing and heartbreaking reading experience empire of pain is a searing portrait of a massive public health crisis one of the most devastating in recent memory as well as the ambition greed and insularity of the family at its center patrick couldn't be here with us tonight, but we salute him. the mark linton history prize is awarded annually to a work of history on any subject that best combines intellectual distinction with felicity of expression and carries a $10,000 honorarium. this year's judges were julia keller anthony depalma and carrie greenridge. this year's winner is author jane ragoska for surviving cotton. so stalin's polish massacre and the search for truth. jane is a british author and filmmaker of polish origin and is also the author of gerda tarot inventing robert kappa with a particular interest in the in the turbulent period from the 1930s to the cold war in europe. the judges write in their citation to the chili and brutal abstraction of the phrase mass grave surviving cotton provides an eloquent and crucial clarification. they were individuals those 22,000 polish prisoners of war secretly murdered during world war two and buried in a polish forest. for decades the crime was blamed on the nazis. as rugoiska traces with a quietly masterful breadth of detail, however evidence now proves that stalin personally ordered the massac. thus her book is part detective story part historical narrative part biography of the victims and part moral reckoning with urgent relevance to contemporary conflicts. congratulations. jane. come on. should sit this year's finalist for the mark linton. history prize is katie booths the invention of miracles language power and alexander graham bell's quest to end deafness katie teaches writing at the university of pittsburgh and was raised in a mixed hearing and deaf family. this is her first book. the judges 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 a retelling of his decades-long crusade to teach the deaf to speak with their lips and not their hands. relying on bell's own papers and those of his contemporaries as well as diving deeply into the archives. deaf community both focuses on the cultural impact of bell's work with the deaf without shying away from the more controversial aspects of his mission bypassing sign language interpreting deaf genealogy and flirting with the now discredited science of 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 could not be with us tonight. finally the two j anthony lucas work in progress awards in the amount of $25,000 given annually to aid the completion of significant works of nonfiction and on a topic of american political or social concern. this year's judges were rachel louise snyder the chair. paul golub and david troyer roxanna askarian wins the first award for we were once a family the heart murder suicide in the system failing our kids. she is an independent investigative journalist focused on the child on child protection and criminal legal systems and a native of las vegas the judges citation reads tracing the devastating story of the hart families shocking murder suicide after the children's adoptive mothers drove the entire family of california cliff asgarian paints a moving portrait of lost lives and failed systems within ever present lands on poverty and racism asgarians investigation illuminates, the innumerable ways child welfare agencies failed these six young black children and indicts the ways the most vulnerable among us or imperiled by the very systems created to protect them. congratulations roxanna. cross my friend but we have to smile. okay, the second works in work in progress award goes to magiang for the life sex work and love in america may as a reporter at vanity fair her reporting from afghanistan has received the south asian journalist. association's daniel pearl award. judges citation carefully piecing together the vast mosaic of forces that often compel sex work in america today poverty neglect racism addiction discrimination john diseffects the ways in which women are punished disproportionately for the actions of men her tireless reporting on the chaotic and have hazard world of domestic sex trafficking grapples with the very idea of how we think about sex workers today including not only the stigma around them, but also the very idea of what it means culturally criminally and sociologically to rescue someone. congratulations may okay now it's time for our panel discussion, which will be led by pamela paul. who's a member of the lucas board. so i'm going to leave the stage and she's going to come up pamela until very recently like about a week ago or something was the editor of the new york times book review, which she'd done for nine years. is that right? and she oversaw all book coverage at the time. so former arts correspondent for the economist pamela joined the times in 2011 as the children's books editor. and is the author of eight books now, she's just starting a career as a time's opinion columnist. i believe two columns so far, so she's off to a flying start and come on up and don't don't go here go there and i'll go down and listen to you. thanks everybody. two quick things before we start one. i'm not actually going to be checking my phone, but i am being texted 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 really good and right that we take a moment to note that there are four women winners up here. it was you know when i joined the book review only 11 years ago. there was still this sort of background to be if like women writing serious nonfiction. so now it just feels natural and good and just so congratulations to everyone here. i just want to start off by asking a really basic question of each of you and i'm going to start i'm not going to go down in order. i'm going to start with the two who have written their books just to make a little bit easier on those who are not quite done to tell us about the origin story of your book and project because andrea, i know you started this when you were at the time it started from your journalism. yes. so first of all, i want to just say i'm so incredibly honored to receive this. award and lucas is a hero and i am sitting in this room with mentors of mine in this room including sam friedman whose book class. i would like to think really planted the seed of this if we're talking about origins many many years ago and my daughter's here and my agentina and i just owe them so much. she's telling me to speak up. okay. thank you for that. so you know. well what i would say about it to to kind of summarize it is that i have been drawn to. you know human existence into the the narratives of people more than anything else and i had been doing that for a really long time when i found my way into this story of but in a very ironic manner, which was a statistic is what did it i saw one in five children were growing up poor in america. i thought that was strange and kind of outrageous. i called colleagues started, you know working the phones to kind of figure out. why this wasn't a bigger store story and in way it wasn't a bigger story because and that's part of the reason it was such a big story is that it is a stubborn problem and it wasn't going away and we were coming upon half a century after lbj's declared were on poverty and some gains had happened but a lot remained to be done. and so just from that kind of like many many thousands of feet above the ground jump out of the sky. i wound up landing finally in the life of dasani after a long long search and by the time i met her my typical reporter checklist had kind of gone out the window. i had this checklist that was based on a certain demographic profile that meant it was a smaller family that maybe she was part latina. i am latina would have been easier i would have been able to speak spanish with her parents all of those things just wound up being kind of background noise because when i met her she just grabbed my heart and i felt electrified around her and her family. i felt like these were people whose lives i wanted to know and then you know when i find usually is that if that's the case for me, it's gonna be the case for the reader. and so that's that was how it all began and but i never thought i would have spent as much time as i wound up spending with them. well speaking of time just quickly how long to do spend reporting this series that appeared in the paper. and at what point did you say to yourself? there's more and there's a book here, and i want to do that. so i really think that writing a book is a little bit iii. this is i'm just gonna say it. it's a little bit like getting married. you know, you have to be very very much in love because you know, it's gonna be really hard and i hadn't fallen in love until then with a story this way. i just i didn't decide to write a book. i think it just kind of chose me. i i don't even remember when the moment was but i do remember picking up the phone and calling tina and saying will you be my agent because this series is is running in the paper literally was day two of the series and my phone's ringing off the hook, and i think i have a book and you said sure and it's quickly became a book, but it was it was it was in my mind, i think. as a book long before that moment, and i think it's it just it took possession of me. you know, it's a story that just took possession of me and kept showing me everything i didn't know and i thought i knew the city. i thought i knew but here it really is. look at this the history. i thought i knew no go deeper and at every turn i felt like it was. an education in so many new and important issues. and so that's why it took as long as it did because i felt i owed it to the story to go as deep as i did. jane for you, i'm assuming you went into this knowing this was going to be a book. but how did you what was the origin of the project? i really recognize that thing about being possessed by an idea because i've lived with this subject for several years now. i think the seed was originally planted. i don't know if anybody remembers in 2010. there was a terrible air crash the smallest air crash, which was when the polish president along with many dignitaries was on his way. in fact to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the 1940 cat in massacre and the plane crash just out side small and setting off a series of echoes of the original event, which were very very powerful and it was at that moment. i think that the seed was planted because i realized that none of my friends knew what cat in was and had never heard of it and i started thinking about it and i wrote another book and i went away from it. and then when i was thinking about writing a new book, it took hold of me and and actually almost has yet to release me. i'm still slightly living with the legacy of it. but yes, it's taken up quite a lot of space in my head for a long time and taken me on on a very long journey of research not with living people, but with dead people at home, but actually in a way part of my motivation was an act of resurrection because the victims are 22,000 polish prisons of war who died in this massacre of whom just under 400 survived. tend to be treated as sort of faceless martyrs. they're only associated as victims of this massacre and i really felt i wanted to bring them back as as human beings with all their faults and all their individual personalities. and that was the kind of initial motivation and it broad from there given that there was a low awareness of this event in the uk. did you have to do a lot of persuading to say like this this deserves to be investigated? this should be a book well interestingly. so i was in the process of changing agent and factor and i wrote to an agent who i was interested in representing me and i i sent him something else and then i did that thing that writers i'm do i don't know if it's just me. yeah. i've got this idea and then at the end you you say and i've got a couple of other ideas and and katyn i was this little thing at the end and he emailed back and said i'm not interested. this one, but i i'd really like to see a book about cat in so he was very much behind it and one world who's a smaller publisher got behind it. and and yeah, and that's that's how it happened. so actually i personally didn't have to do a lot of persuading but i think perhaps he did. yeah roxanna you started off as andrea did reporting this and when did you decide this should be a book and and this is what i want to do. it was a widely reported at the time. yes, so i live in texas and the way i got a hold of this story at first was that it was a breaking news assignment from the oregonian in portland, and i went to find the birth families of the birth family of three of the kids that were involved in the crash. and that was a tip that i got from a friend of ours who lives in portland and so i went in there on like a day one day two story and i was the only reporter around so typically i've done breaking news in new york and you're with a scrum of people and everyone's kind of so, i was sort of expecting that it wasn't like that at all. i was i was invited into their home and i immediately i mean i was pretty overwhelmed with the grief that they were experiencing because it had just heard the news of their children who had been removed from their care a decade prior that they had just heard that that they had been murdered so i had actually written a story about foster care in 2016 or something. and so when i was hearing what was going on, i was like this is a this is a foster care story. this is a child welfare story. and like you said, it was a pretty big national story at the time and it felt like there was this cognitive dissonance between what i was experiencing with the birth families and then what was being reported. which was very focused on the women very focused on like the psychological motivations. it was very true crimey and i felt like there was a equally if not more important narrative about the systems in place that allowed it and sort of enabled it to happen. that was not getting. that was not getting looked at and then also there was just this extreme emotional element of this family's grief that felt very it bold me over and i felt like i you know, i did a couple breaking news stories then i did a deeper story and then i did a story on the other birth family and i was like this isn't done for me. i don't feel finished with it, you know, and so that's sort of how it i said, i think this is all kind of one larger story and it needs to be told together. and not quite yet finished with it, but hopefully we'll soon be may our other work in progress when our how did you decide to write a book on this subject? how did the idea come to you? i was just thinking that there's probably should actually be called the not quite finished yet before which i'm very grateful to have one. i have many origin stories, but i think the most succinct one is that i'm a magazine writer and normally after i finish a story. i never want to talk about that subject ever again, and i had done a few stories about sex work and sex trafficking and these prostitution raids in 2018 and 19 and i still had a lot of questions left, which is always a good sign and i figured i you know, i i work for myself and 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 of this two months that i had a lot of myself. i had nothing. i was very confused and i actually i went up to susie's house upstate and i gave myself a week. i'm gonna like, you know cobble together some kind of a proposal or something and instead i spent the week like going on hikes and reading plays and i did nothing and i came home and distressed thinking, you know, i wasted 60 days, but what is 60 days and i'm going through my mail and there's a letter from a like a woman's prison facility. and i mean i think reporters do get mail from prison and usually it's like i'm a serial killer to be a penpot pal and you see that's usually the case but in this instance it was this eight-page letter need handwriting and it was a woman who had rid an article i had written in vanity fair magazine about a prostitution raid and the only reason why i should subscribe to vf was because of the perfumancers. that's the only reason why she wanted to you know, at this magazine and she you know, she normally never reads articles, but it caught her eye because it was about because she was sorry. i'm telling the story in the terrible way. she was in prison for sex trafficking a minor which sounds terrible, but as is often the case when you sort of peel back the layers, that's not quite as it seems and that was the beginning of it. i'm gonna ask a question that i think we often ask at this event the first time i came to the lucas prize ceremony. bob caro was one of the winners and we asked or someone asked him about his process and this is where i first learned that you know, he would get dressed and like put on a suit and and a tie and go to his office and i always thought you know, i don't felt like something to aspire to oddly but so here's the process question for all of you and may all actually just start with you again. what is your writing process like where do you write? how do you work? do you use old-timey things like paper products and pens or what do you do? scrivener i use scrivener. so i just i read everything. i talked to everyone. you know like just download everything watch all the things and then everything gets dumped into scrivener and then i create like an or document of everything i want in there and then i just move it around until it makes sense. and that's it. that i do. everyone can name their favorite app and in terms of also like when do you get up and and work? your day like he knows he here. i mean, i obviously lead the most virtuous life i rise with the thought. i don't know have a complete breakfast do yoga for four hours? chained to you get dressed in your suit and tie only i love this question. i have to say i've just today i'm lucky enough to be in new york for a few days. i live in london. i just found a stationary shop in somewhere in in greenwich village. what's it called? i can't remember but it i'm obsessed with stationery. not that it plays a part of my process. it does a little bit i start in the morning i go to work i go to work upstairs in my house. i start at a whatever nine thirty whatever i work with quiver now, which is a very useful app if you're not familiar with it. it's it's a very useful app for writers particularly if you've got a lot of material coming from different sources. i find it really helpful for kind of looking at things in a non-linear way. i have to have a coffee. there's like a symbolic coffee that it makes that i think when you work from home. and if you have a family as well, it's very difficult important to make a dividing line between your work existence and your your family existence and i shut my door i have my coffee and then supposedly i start work but you know you show up you do the work you do it every day and you don't wait for inspiration. i've learned this through bitter experience. you don't wait for the inspiration you just get on with it and i will work all morning and depending what there are different state. i'm sure everyone else will appreciate the very different stages to writing researching i could do that all day quite happily. i could just research it an archive sit on internet journeys disappear down a tunnel wonderful. starting to write is like pulling teeth. it's awful and i would do almost anything to avoid it and it sort of physically really difficult once you've written a baggy horrible first draft rough draft, and then you'll rewriting rewriting redrafting endless version 1.13 something whatever endless endless then that becomes equally obsessive and can take up many hours, but that's my process too. obviously like research and this is a work of history does did the fact that you had to go deep into the historical record present challenges do you in terms of language in terms of accessibility of sources? it's a very interesting one that actually because the nature of the subject so the cat in massacre because it was covered up for over four decades in eastern europe in the west. there was a lot of information about it so actually most of the information pre the collapse of communism 1990 is in london, which is where the polish government in exile was based and the shikorsky institute there holds enormous quantities of material as does the british library has an extraordinary polish connection, so i had to do the research in a mixture of english and polish polish. i'm half polish, but i was not brought up speaking polish, and i've learned it as an adult and i it's i find it hard work. everything post 1990 comes out of poland or russia. and so i had to go to warsaw to research in archives there. i mean there's an awful lot that you can get through the internet nowadays, but there was a i wanted to find fresh research, so i went back to primary sources in in poland. so it was a kind of two-pronged thing, but actually an enormous chunk of the first part of the research was done in london and in the material from russia, this is all open now you can get to it well, so the the material about cat in was opened in the 1990s and has all been translated into polish. i don't speak russian, so i read it all in polish a lot of it again amazingly how we love our libraries the british library has astonishing quantities of it. and you know, i only had to go to poland for very obscure things that hadn't found its way into publication. yeah roxanne. i'm going to skip to you because i just want to say that if you're not using scrivener clearly, this is what we'll get you over the finish line. what is your working? you'll get a commission writing and research and reporting. um, so i got the book deal two weeks before lockdown and that was so the idea that i had in my head about the process of writing. the book very much not the way that it actually went i ended up doing so i have a five-year-old and we were all at home for a good year and a half so i ended up doing these writing trips to the hill country. i live in houston. and so i would go to these sort of guests houses on the ranch with the cows and the goats and stuff and it was you know, i would do i would report for like a month on whatever chapter i was gonna be working on and then i would go and just bang it out in four days usually and that was a really i did it because i just literally couldn't get the brain space that i needed to do the deep writing with my kiddo at home. but then i kind of just love it. it was it ended up being really, you know, because you could just work all day to work 10 hours and you can make yourself like an egg and then not talk to. he went so i i feel like maybe now i i have spoiled myself for future writing projects because it is very to write totally alone. andrea what was like for you? what was your process? so as the mom of two children a single mom, but with the devoted co-parent so i had stretches of time where i could devote to myself entirely to the writing i very much relate to what you just said and i feel about time a certain almost kind of greed like i i'm i jealously guarded when i have it. definitely i'm waking up at 5am and going around the clock and you know of just obsessively trying to squeeze everything i can out of that solitude because interruption for me is the enemy of of the process and children as we know are and we love them so much they interrupt so you have to so when i had my kids i woke up very early. usually i tried to crank two hours of work before they woke up and they tended to wake up because they've grown up with this book. so ava was three when i started she's 13 now. and that got me into this rhythm of waking up really early in this discipline, but i will also say and i loved what you said. it is very early. mmm, four wow, okay. i just have to ask you i mean when after for me i could never sleep past six after having kids. i just rewired my brain forever. i could be i'm not pretending i could be hungover and doesn't matter at six o'clock. i'm wide awake. it's terrible but it just is what it is, but i loved hearing you also speak about your process because i actually think of myself not as a writer but as a rewriter, i think that the words the first words you put on the page. they're just an invitation to kind of really start right and and there's so much it's not one process and it's also not even in the same days at one process. so in terms of carving out time, there's i did, you know, my project was very much a balancing act. i if you could call it that a straddling of real time events that i didn't have any control over constantly happening that i had to stay on top of and the which is a deep immersion of reporting and then a deep immersion of writing and and they were sometimes in battle right and and i had to learn to toggle between them. and so and and and we can you know, i i had a i have a very from the outside it extremely very very organized process almost the point of ocd, but when you go a little bit scratch for note believe the service you see that it's a complete mess. so i was always looking for things or trying to figure out where in the piles but i did have a lot of systems in place and i think you know, i also depend a lot on different mediums. i don't trust my memory and so i work a lot with video and audio and the people i wrote about work would share that those things with me as well. they would take video if i wasn't there and so that helped to bring the writing alive if i hadn't been around in a while, but i just i think like going back to process. you know, i have it there's a morning brain and there's an afternoon. brain, i don't i don't like my afternoon brain. i like my morning early morning and my late evening brain and everything else is fine. but basically you just period after. but yeah, so there's a lot to say about process is a great question. well another process related question then for you because you were writing about a very real person to sonny and her family and they are continuing to live and to their lives are going on and your story is continuing and at what point did you say? okay. i kind of i need to stop here. this is where the story ends in terms of the book and i need to write and stop so 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 three the rings. i don't know is it yes, maybe so i don't i think i i think i knew finally when i when i witnessed the final scene that that is the end. i felt this kind of just whole body like okay, it's over stop, but the process the relationship with the material with the people it you know, it doesn't end it stays inside. i feel like it i and i haven't inhabited this story for the rest of my life in a way and i mean, of course the you know, it's different once you've released it into the world as a book for one thing you get to enjoy the responses of other people. i mean, it's so extraordinary to me that i get to like engage with people who are like and then when chanel said this and supreme, these are people who i was on a first name basis with and inside their lives for years and suddenly if they feel that intimately a part of the life of the reader is is such it's a revelation. but yeah, i'll stop there. i want to stay with both of you for a minute because you we're running with children, but you're writing about children and you're both writing about at-risk children and balancing those very human stories with these larger systemic issues, and i'm interested in getting a sense of how you decide to balance those two big subjects two, very different kinds of storytelling in in your work and roxanna will start with you. because it's all done. yeah. well, i'm getting there. i that's a really good question. i think i i think i i think that my brain thinks of things in a systemic way. possibly so i you know as i said when i met the birth family at first i said, okay. this is definitely a child welfare story and i could and i had learned some reporting skills of how to access information related to child welfare stories, which you know information can be really hard to come by because almost everything is confidential as it relates to specific cases. so that's like a little puzzle for me and i got you know, that's sort of the easy part in a way the the hardest part. for me was the emotional. intensity of the work and the witnessing of the grief and the feelings which were which was like a kind of i felt i would tell my friends. i had sort of had a part-time job of like figuring out how to deal with this kind of work. so for me like the the individual stories are very clear because the emotional beats of the of the stories and of the of my sources experiences felt very intuitive but it was it was. a lot more difficult to do that work than to do the kind of systemic reporting which you can get angry when you're looking at systems that aren't operating well, and that can be that's sustaining, you know, 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 really sit and witness and process. people's real grief may. i'm going to turn to you because you're also talking about a lot of dysfunctional systems and larger issues and your book explores so many different layers from race to immigration to our attitudes around sex and and violence in the sex trade. how do you you talk a little bit about how you're sort of balance and see those different issues working into your book? all the things that you just mentioned, i mean that's why i love the subject. it's that the intersection of so many of my interests and as well as topics that we're having national reckonings around. and i think that's also the challenge of the project as well. i feel like you know, my organizational philosophies probably something closer to like chaotic evil. it's just there's a lot going on and they overlap and i go down these like rabbit holes and occasionally someone sort of pulls me out. but yeah, i mean what i i find super compelling about sex work is that it's not just about sex work way sex work, but it's also happens to be about like gender racing class and you know one of the more like a theme that's been that i'm exploring in one of the sections is this idea of anti, i mean, this has been i think discussed quite a bit now, but the fact that like antiprosecution shouldn't often effectively functions as anti-immigration legislation anti-trans legislation and you know, they're often like anti-woman and anti poor people and yeah, i yeah, so just the ways in which it intersects. i i find quite interesting. that's obviously it was also i think upsettingly i'm very prominent display during the the shootings down in atlanta. where a bunch of massage parlors were shot up. it was really interesting in the early early sort of hours of you know, following that event. there was a lot of need to and i do think this is i don't know if it's like an enlightenment need to categorize or it's just a human thing, but there's a lot of desire to figure out you know, no there are sex workers. no, they died because they're asian and surprise it could be all of the above. unfortunately. you also write that people can be prostitutes and victims both. can you explain what you meant by that sure that was a revelation that came to me. i think some in some ways by of my time in afghanistan i used to live there. that's where i began my career and what i was quite struck by was that in a place like afghanistan it really matters if you are a civilian or fighting age male or some other category that you really you can live and die by them, and that was one of my like big lessons from that place and then i come to america and i realized that our society is structured not much differently. and so the problem with the ways in which six trafficking and sex work is adjudicated within our legal system. is that it really incentivizes people to self-identify as victims. this is the only way in which you can get your sentence communed or not. go to prison at all or what have you and that is what is fueling a rhetoric a particular kind of rhetoric about trafficking being this like big menace as well if you identify yourself as a victim i mean da is actually so the manhattan da recently that office recently came out saying we're not going to prosecute women. and oddly enough the other boards are not following suit, but if you talk to the ds in that office, it's quite interesting is that they they call it the bottom problem and what they mean by that. is that often in the within the hierarchy of you know, being a pimp or madam or what have you you have the pimp and then the second in line is colloquially called the bottom and it's it's often a woman and it's often the bottom who ends up going to prison because she is often, you know, the one who's grooming she's recruiting. she's out there doing the work of the pimp and so in this instance the bottom becomes a perpetrator but so often she's also the victim as well and there's just no room for that kind of nuance in our current system. i think in contrast to the other authors up here you did a kind of reporting unique in that you went undercover and when to actually worked in a strip club in what ways did that experience and form or maybe even change your was of your own subject and how you're going about writing the book sure. i mean, that's the experience. i'm still processing and i haven't quite figured out how to unpack that but i guess i was just struck by how yeah, i'm clearly i'm still processing it, but i guess like one thing i learned is that it's you know, you can have this sort of like public facing version of yourself that has good politics and your coherent and all of that, but then i think sex is this odd place where things become incoherent and i was just so forced to be in my body in a way that i think i often. maybe i find ways of avoiding that by over intellectualizing or through discourse or whatever but in the end, i was like a woman of color and you know working and those those facts are just inescapable in a country that hates women of color were poor. i'm jane your book obviously is happy, you know, the subject happened a long time ago. it's historical but it's impossible not to think about it in terms of contemporary parallels. do you see any kind of connection between the massacre in cotton and the current russian invasion of ukraine? or between stalin and putin i think there are inevitable parallels. i mean, i'm reluctant to draw them too directly. but i think there are certain things that you can see there's a there's a very distinct continuum in the methodology of the manipulation of information the use of outright lies the the creation of false narratives that starts with the nkvd at continues with the kgb and with the fsb though, you know the part of a continuum and putin is a was trained in the kgb was a kgb colonel and the mentality behind that is incredibly strikingly similar and you know often when people have asked me about you know, why should we care about the cat in massacre which in the general context of the appalling brutality of the 20th century numerically is small, you know, you're talking about 22,000 victims. why should we care about it more than all the other hideous crimes and particularly the crimes that style. try to cancel his own people of which there were millions and millions and millions and one of the things that is most worth. considering about catin is this long perpetuated light, you know over four decades a false narrative was maintained complete with fake history books fake monuments pursuit of witnesses, you know erasure of truth intimidation so many things that just do strike a chord now and and in some ways you'd say that when you look at for example the case of alexander navalny recently that actually the methods of the fsb have become slightly less effective because they they are the easier to uncover now and then and then just in terms of the things that we're hearing, i mean, this is obviously this is live news at the moment. these are things that have not yet had time to be fully evidence and process but it seems that we are hearing levels of brutality and things which we had hoped belonged to the past and i i said to somebody earlier that one of the actions that i have had since i found it very difficult since since the invasion i thought about it a lot. i'm not sure i could have written this book now because i felt i think in order to write lots of people ask me. you know, why you writing a book about a massacre surely, you know the sounds so depressing why you focused on this and for me i as i said earlier, it was always about a kind of act of resurrection of bearing witness and honoring the people who spent so long trying to uncover the truth, but part of my ability to write about it was predicated on the fact that for me it was at least to some extent safely in the past. and it just doesn't seem that way now. well having successfully finished the book. i wonder if i could ask you one last question and it's really a question on behalf of may and roxanna. this is for both of you if you had to give advice to these two authors who are working to complete their books, what would you say? what was most helpful for you and in keeping you going on your respective projects? and what would maybe your post publication self? say to the person who is knee deep in the project. okay a couple of quick first of all trust in the process so that is just about knowing that you know where your book is going better than anyone else and this leads to the other thing that i wish i had learned early on which i think is especially relevant to someone who's midstream when your midstream you are vulnerable i think more than at the beginning of a book when it's exciting and it's new or at the end when you you know, you're you're reaching the finish line in the middle you're vulnerable i think to the perceptions of others that what what are they thinking the question the dreaded question you get if you actually go out at there was a probably two years stretch where i didn't even go out but where you're at a dinner party and and the words come out, you know, so, how is your book and you just don't even let them finish that question because it leads to doubts that are very very corrosive to the process and i think what you really want is to never make major reporting or editing decisions from a position of weakness, but from a position of strength that means you're well rested. that means that you feel like you've just you just want to grant and you know what you're doing versus you're desperately trying to figure out how to pay the rent. so those are all hard, you know acts that advice to follow but i i would tell that's to myself again next time around and jane. i'm sitting here racking my brains. i have no idea largely because i think the process once you're in the process to me that's relatively easier than starting. the process and completing it i think for me the focus is always about the writing and i you know, i'm endlessly chipping away at it reworking it and i suppose there comes a point where you just have to have to stop and hand it over to somebody and and let them look at it and let it go i suppose is that thing there is also that thing about that the inability to talk about projects to people outside of it. i think it's incredibly difficult. to talk about something when you're in the middle of it and trying to find a short. this is a very practical piece of advice. it's not a kind of existential one a very short version of your story that when people go watch. so what are you working on you can say without driving them insane with boredom because i i have i have been to do that before particularly when you're very obsessed with something and you you can't encapsulate it in a couple of sentences. it's the kind of elevator pitch to use a filmmaking sort of thing. i did once bump into a neighbor who and we were getting on the same bus home and she was very sweet and she seemed genuinely interested and always a mistake ask me what i was writing about and we i was still talking when we got off the bus and she got off with me and she's looking, you know, and i'm halfway through the story of stalin and these very serious things like very nice to bump into you. so and roxanna, he did a very good job of coach ready. practice for fresh air being able to talk about your book that's really sense. i could ask all of you so many more questions about the content of your books about the process of writing them, but i want to give our audience a chance to ask questions. so there's a microphone right there in the middle if anyone has questions for our for authors, please feel free. we've exhausted you. and our our zoom audience can also send in questions, right? so any questions that come in that way? hi, thank you and congratulations all of you. and thank you pamela. this has been a great conversation. i had a question about navigating your publishing deal. any advice you would have for someone who? was interested in having one or lessons learned in terms of as you get one getting an agent for any of our students who might be interested in possibly writing a book. just a few bits of advice on that would be great. thank you. maybe the more recent dealmakers should speak first. i don't know. i'm gonna go roxanna. sure. i as far as advice goes to people who would like to get a deal. you know, i i think i really was flying blind for a good portion of it until i found my agent mckenzie, and she helped me a lot with my book proposal. i think i i wrote several stories ahead of my book proposal and that was really helpful because it a it i did a lot of reporting beforehand but b. i also i realized that it was it was all one thing in my brain and that helped me a lot. i think in pitching the book. i do think like your agent is super important in the process. and so, you know the query process and also just i think i mean in my experience doing a lot of reporting on the front end made getting the deal easier and also made writing the book easier because i really did have a sense of where i was going with it when i sold it. name and what roxanna said i i mean i was gonna say the most important thing is getting a good agent and my amazing agent is here, but that feels a bit like a tautology like obviously you need it. you know then how do you get a good age? and you do good work and so there's that trick, but yeah writing a few pieces just to see if you even like it is i think a good thing to do just just to test it out. and i think just having conviction that it's a good story than in some ways the like external validation of like having an agent selling the book like that stuff doesn't matter as much i think when you're younger like that stuff is really important and it does help you obviously, but if it's really good like someone's gonna buy it at some point and so just trusting in the process and knowing that it's gonna come together that feels important. i agree with that and i would just add i don't think a book is something you back into. i think it's something that you must write it. that's what makes it the right project and the having a great agent as i am. so blessed to have with tina bennett is not just about having a brilliant business person to help kind of get you the best deal. it's about early on creating a community around your book which consists of you your agent your editor, hopefully and maybe a couple of very very key readers who will lift the work basically from its inception to its final stage. you know that we'll help shepherd it through and and that's that was absolutely essential to my editor came to you know, these were people who for years were kind of holding the lantern for me when otherwise the field would have been just completely dark like you're gonna make it you're gonna make it so i think but so just knowing that i had to write i couldn't not write this book and i think that that's an important place to start from especially if you're coming out of j school. hopefully we'll have taken sam friedman's class. so you have some you know, you you have a lot of ballast there if you have but there is just an enthusiasm that is extremely important to the process if you know, you must write the book. i think that that is a that makes up for lack of experience potentially. yes. i think you have to be very prepared. i think it's really important to understand that a project that you commit to for book. it has to be something that you are prepared to live with for several years because even if you know even even if you think it's going to be a short thing it isn't it's a long-term relationship and you have to be so passionate about it. you can't not do it and also, you know the art of nonfiction writing is persuading people to be interested in something. they didn't know they were going to be interested in and you know, so you have to be able to carry that. i was i mean, i can't speak to the american process. i'd essay. it's fairly similar, but i was in the process of changing an agent and i deliberately approached an agent who had a background as a nonfiction editor. and i found that so helpful along the way because he gave he gave so much to helping put the proposal together. he helped in in editing and it's just very useful to have another person that you can bounce ideas off that you trust. yeah. other questions from our audience hi, i'm emily. i'm a student and a fellow with the prizes department. thank you all for being here. i have a question about the reporting process and how you build your confidence and maintain your confidence throughout your reporting and writing that you are the right person to be tackling whatever subjective story. it is specifically when you're reporting and writing about a community that you you yourself do not belong to. yeah, i did not i'll just jump in and say yes because right it is very on point with your column. first of all, i always assume i'm the wrong person to write about anything. i think our job is journalists is to be very very both driven and ambitious and at the same time insecure about our lack of knowledge. we are there as students we're there to learn and i i that's the thing that i love the most about 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 dasani's story and what i would say is that i don't see it as my right. i see it as my duty. it is my duty as a journalist. to show up for the most important stories of my time. and i think this is one of them. her story represents in every journalist of every background should be should be trying to understand these issues delving into them in some manner. and of course we bring blind spots, but it is not our job to stay in our own sort of demographic or other other cultural labels lane like just to stay in my lane means that i would only be able to write about other women like me. in their 40s from the east coast who have one immigrant parent and one america. i mean, it would be a very limited subject. so i think you know, we're true. it's in our dna a lot of us got into this because we're curious. we like to cross into other lanes and go into other territories to be surprised by the unknown to encounter it and to and and and in encountering it to also be met with the reflection of our own, you know shortcomings and potentially know our own blind spots, and i think that it's also about just being very very open with the people. you're writing about having it be a conversation talking about these things with them which i have for many years with designing her family, you know, it's was front and center to our process to talk about our differences. and also what what we had in common i want to i want to say that i think it's really good to question. whether you're the right person to tell the story, i think that's a good part of the process. i think if you if you don't then you do have i think your blind spots are more more. maybe more obvious to others so it's good for you to say, you know, why me? i definitely did a lot throughout the process and i think you know part of it was i was making relationships with my sources and and those relationships were deepening and that was feeling i was feeling that their stories were not being told in the way that they should be told at the in my case. the story itself was was big national news. and so i felt like well here i am in this place where i have the ability to tell their story and no one. is telling that that you know, but i also think like going having that kind of back and forth with yourself is an exercise in kind of interrogating your own blind spots where you come from. what your perspective is and that's all really important to the work as a whole. other view of thought i don't think we're gonna settle the debate of identity politics today, but i so, you know because my book is about sex work. obviously, it's like a long meditation on consent really and is used mentioned, i mean books on mentioned what's really important is like getting active consent from your subjects, but as well, i guess something that i'm thinking about is and i apologize it won't be able to remember the third thing but you know aristotle talks about like three ways of making an argument. it's like logos pathos and then what's the other one? sorry. yes, you you're very smart. so it's not just about. your you know lived experience is very important as well. what's equally important is like doing the work doing the hard work doing all the research and making a very persuasive argument and when i think about the book as a project beyond my scrivener file. like that's what i'm thinking about being able to do all those three things and i think similar to what you'd mentioned as well like it's a duty and i think actually maybe more so for me i think about it is a real privilege. i'm contributing something to this community who has given me this like tremendous honor of letting me into people's lives and i think if you lead with like gratitude and curiosity that's a good thing. i'm not a journalist. so i'm not sure i can comment on it particularly. so yeah, i'm probably well we are actually out of time. so i want to thank all of you for the opportunity to talk to you about your books and everyone else here on the board and the judges and to urge all of you. especially the students who are here or watching to read these books and to these for great writers work. so thank you all. thank you.