Celebrate these wonderful awards. In the memory of one of the great nonfiction narrative writers of any generation, certainly a great influence on the generation of writers that i grew up around, and probably among the folks being honored tonight. What we are going to do tonight is try to concentrate on the substance rather than they ceremony since zoom is not a great place to exchange awards and the like. So were going to have a series of conversations with our four winners, and then ill when were done well take your questions in chat. And well try to wrap up in an hour, following the zoom practice not leaving you in front of your computer screen for to long especially this time of day. As we get started, for those who may be knew to the awards and to the legacy that they honor, we have a short video about J Anthony Luka ss prizes. People talk but book writing, they almost always talk but the process of writing. Sitting there by the keyboard, and writing it dont and it is in many respected not in the most important. The most important part is the report. Start heed a a newspaper report. Diligent reporter and you see old farced devotion oldfashioned devotion to fact. An entertaining yarn. He has the kind of set of ideas about nonfiction writing and what he really hoped for was that it would be a sort of elf vacation of Nonfiction Book writing to the level of literature. Tony cared so much about the craft but he really cared also about other peoples work in this area. When tony died i went to arthur hill and said i want to do something to Carry Forward what tony cared but so passionately. Wanted people would won the award. Samantha pawer. David finkle and on and on. We think of them as in this kind of elite group of american authors who aspire to the kind of colony we see in continue tonys work. The history prize which is named for the late mark none of this would be possible without the support of the family. As we talk about what narrative nonfiction meant to tony. Not just this one award that but a work in progress award. When i got the award aallow he met to delve in more deeply to take more time, and also gave me Institutional Health and legitimacy for a firsttime author it gave me confidence. Prize was meaningful to me bus his kind of work, narrative nonfiction, that is both serious and incredibly entertain is what i wanted to do when he grew up. Tony did in his work and our winner does in their work, they blend storytelling with a social conscience. The idea was to hold tony and his work up as standard bearers for authors and if you looked at the two decades now of prize winners, i think you can say the board has really done that. Its kind of a pantheon of excellence. Welcome back, everybody. And you can see why were so proud at columbia to be the stewards of these prizes, and i want to thank the judges and the Board Members who participated this year and n renewing this commitment to the kind of work that tony left us, and also to thank the past winner for being with us tonight and look forward to hearing from some of you, and as was mentioned in the film, we owe a great debt to the family for their support of this institution. Welcome alex. So thanks steve for having me. Select good to see you in. Were celebrating tonight keri has a 10000dollar honorarium, alexs author of a bestseller and several other books including this which has a relationship by family tree with no children here. His work has appeared in the times magazine, the new yorker, and adapted for this American Life which is also authored it northwestern university. Kerri greenidge is the winner this year of the history prize also carries a 10000dollar honorarium, she is being honored for her book black radical. Kerri has had some zoom to glitches issues here i welcome her. Kerri are you here . There you are. We may not be able to hear you but we can see you. And can you hear us . Host kerri teaches a consortium and colonialism and is the director of the program in american studies and also co director of the african trail project shes joining us from massachusetts will try to fix her microphone. Now we turn to the two winners of the works in progress award that nancy talked about so wellin the video, its really a distinctive institution and nonfiction and journalism, 25000dollar prize for two works in progress each year. In this years winners with the forthcoming book true story of the first homegrown islamic territory hes a professor of journalism the university of richmond in virginia and he previously worked as reported to Christian Science monitor and was a fulbright scholar in india where he researched political islam. Then our second works in projects winner for his forthcoming book, seed money. Welcome bart. Think its a pleasure to be here. Bart is an associate professor there in environmental history and has Sustainability Institute and the class of 2017 national new american foundation. His first book was in citizen coke as an cocacola. The making of cap but elizabeth cocacola and examine the Environmental Impact of cocacola worldwide operations. I will try to hold myself to a bout ten minutes or less with each of the four winners, starting with the two works in progress winners and then on chat as we wind down with about 50 minutes of the hour will welcome your questions and try to pass those around to our gas. So bart lets start with you. Your book is about one of the big subjects in environmental debate and discourse which is whether to genetically modified foods is it a good thing a dangerous thing . How am packed full they are, and i was struck by of what i understood of the book the review of the risks and impact of gf m, that you find monsanto has really delivered on their promise that genetically engineered seeds have not advanced agricultural productivity to the degree forecasted or promised. Can you say a little bit more about that finding in your work . Guest absolutely i also did say thanks to the committee as well. Its such a crazy moment we are all here on zoom. These prices go along way to help us finishing this project. I just want to say thanks so much. I just say when i started this i really didnt think it was the gmos that first drew me in. Honest darted i was writing a can chapter on cocacola trying to figure out where cocacola got its caffeine from. I turned out monsanto was a first caffeine supplier. Weirdly they produce it from waste of all things. Tea leaves were left onto exchanges around the world. It becomes a recycling system. So i got hooked on that and i ended up going and finding their archives there at washington university. And i just went to the story. And to your point, i did not know what was going to be the most interesting finding. But being at ohio state, which is also a tremendous Agricultural Institution with top lead scientist there, i really became fascinated with these questions of what do we actually know now that we are 20 years or more, little bit more than 20 years now, from the first introduction of the resistant herbicide tolerant genetically engineered seeds. Really to your point, what really stood out, was that data on yield. That 20 years ago the argument was we need these things to feed the world. The yield of these genetically engineered crops will be so much more than what we had before, and i just thought that was a given weve got to accept the other costs in every thing that just did not and it being so. It ended up interviewing the top scientists of the National Academy of sciences. Gould and North Carolina state and said in my reading this right . The yield data seems to be the same as we would get conventionally bred. He said yes thats kind of overseeing. So for me i think that was a really important thing for us to be discussing. Ever thinking about the future of food, i think now historians, what i do we can weigh in on this. We have 20 years of data and there are real questions about whether this promise of productivity is holding true. Host so not an impressive result, but a very dramatic upset nonetheless. You write that monsanto Seed Enterprises are radically reshaping global ecosystems. So tell us how that has happened over those 20 years from the perspective environmental history, and do you have a net assessment as they say in washington of this radical altering demonstrably damaging . Demonstrably beneficial or just changed that you would say difficult to describe in those terms . Guest thats a great question steve. He think one of the most interesting journeys theres a couple journeys i took one to vietnam because there it was fascinating right . The same company produced agent orange and we know dow chemical did that as well. If you look at volume production, monsanto had more agent orange. Was interesting there is a company thats now coming into vietnam selling seeds of life, food, and corn of all things. But, you know that location was interesting to think about wow how the company overcome that passed literally down the street from their headquarters were i walked in kind of unannounced is that museum that talks about monsanto agent orange and the impact on that environment. As an interesting story and i point to brazil i think about the global impact. One of the big issues right now is a herbicide called dye camber. It is just emerged in the last several years as a way to dealing with roundup resistant weeds this is a herbicide sold that it became resistant to it so to deal with this, monsanto, now a german owned company, is selling these stacked genetically engineer seeds that have resistant to roundup and resistant and to dicamba. The one thing is it dicamba has drifted when you spray that herbicide it jumps up in the air and will spread on to other crops. If you dont have dicamba resistant engineered seeds, your farms get hit, their court cases ive sat in on them here where farmers are livid about this, their farms have been affected by this. When i went to brazil, to your point, this scared the heck out of the people there. The farmers i talked to, the scientist at top universities in brazil, were just approving dye campus system there. Few think about hot climates, the tropical environments the way that will force compliant dylan to get genetically engineered seeds will be really concerning problem for the future. Talk a lot about roundup right now. But dicamba is a next big story. Select cingular so much more here than i am the clock will move on. Reading your excerpts as a reminder when a deck the 1970s were starting with penn state, and ending with events like a bombing after another. This was an enormous crisis that as you point out, i remember what it was in your proposal, when you would explain to people what this book was about, they would often say has night book been written about this before . I think first we need to ask you to please remind us what the season was exactly as simply as possible pitted when did it happen and what happened . [laughter] okay in three days in march 1 about 40 hours in total were three locations in washington d. C. Were taken over by three groups of armed men all from the same group. They took about close to 150 hostages in these three locations. They were the bridge on rhode island avenue, and another Central Massachusetts avenue and the district building which is just right across the street from the white house. They all came from this group who were headquartered in washington d. C. They were under the leadership of this man and it was for three days straight, three nights it was completely dominated Network Evening news and it was on the front page of newspapers across every small town newspaper in bigcity newspapers across the world. It was Headline News for at least three days. It ended after three days after three local ambassadors decided to enter with a hostage leader was and try to negotiate the settlement. Thats the kind of event that if it were to happen today, there is no way i could imagine we would forget about this considering the elements. There is something about that point in time when there is a lot happening and that something i am still exploring is perhaps something about what it meant at that time what it meant to americans. Host how did the hostage taking and for the sake of the audience. Guest spoiler alert. Yes it was a deadly event, there were casualties. But in the end, the muslim ambassadors were able to talk and have a facetoface meeting in the presence of a couple and armed police officers. They were able to convince them to let all the hostages go. And on the condition that the hostages leader also walk out and he slept in his bed that night. And thats the third act of the book. Host thinking about the kind of non fiction that is honored, yet we you have a very tight resident event thats tight for narration with detail, character, setting, but is some distance in the past. So you need rich sourcing. How did you discover materials or the survivors who could really bring the story beyond the yellowed newspaper clipping to a different level of reader experience . Guest im very lucky that i caught this story at the moment i did. Because yes its now over 40 years old, a lot of the people are around. Every kind of moment of this story with 40 hours there is the negotiating room, the Police Command center, there were hostages in the place where there being kept hostage. I have been able to fight almost every place. Im lucky in those people who were in their 30s and 40s are now in their 70s and 80s and some of the 90s. Even where the basset or survive there are three, the last iranian abbasid to the United States he lives in switzerland where i was able to meet with him. I have been very to be able to find people and a lot of the hostages. But really, relying on memory of an event that old would not have been enough. Ive been really lucky with other sources as well. Really lucky as a reporter to be able to get the evidence from the Washington Metropolitan Police department keeping track of the main characters of over 25 years. Ive been able to get those files as well. There is an extensive court cases after it all ended its been this really satisfies the narrative perspective of somebody creating a narrative of being able to use these an interview with sources. But to have really rich archival material and print material to rely on. I could go on, as with bart, but i want to welcome kerri into the conversation. Are you with this kerri . Guest can you hear me . Host yes i can you have a phone that the solution, it looks ingenious. Guest yes it is i apologize with his story in technology is not my strong suit. Although ive been speaking on zoom for the past couple of weeks. Thank you for having me. Host congratulations to you. Weve got dozens of folks, students, and others listening in i was grateful for the opportunity to read about the life of william, of whom i must confess to my shame that i really did not know very much about. I knew about the times he lived in, but the centrality of his role and the kind of trajectory that he add on the spectrum of thoughts and action and response to jim crow was absolutely fascinating and distinctive. Partly because he came from boston, but also because of the ideologies that he wrestled with and expressed. If its not too difficult, introduce us to why you were drawn to him as a biographical subject and what about his trajectory through that first 20 years of the last century you thought needed to be illuminated at this length and scale and was neglected and that history time. Guest i approached the life from the perspective that Boston Common new england in areas outside of the post reconstruction south, are often ignored we have conversations about our political history. And particularly this notion that a place like bostons history is often cut into two time. Its before the civil war and which theres abolition abolitionist history with douglas and such and then the civil war and then theres not a lot between the civil war in the 1970s. Its the idea we have. So i really wanted to get into what was happening in a place like new england that we often dont think of as having, number one a racial footprints into abolition and 20th century civil rights and what does it look like when you have somebody who is arguing for pretty radical emotions of rights and justice at a time when historically they would say that came later. So i grew up hearing about women from my grandparents who were some of activists. I received my doctorate i wanted to to do research on him and the black press. I was often frustrated outside of my advisor that there was this notion that you could not do history of black people outside of the south between 1865 in 1930s. Because they did not have voting rights, the north in particular felt toward black people as opposed to the place had complicated racial history. I fully believe that this is one of the people with activism as it works. It is problematic due to justice in america particularly with gender. Really gives us a window into the complicated history of civil rights and also the complicated future with the africanamericans. We have this notion that black people couldnt vote. The vote was denied black people magically became democrats after roosevelt and the gop was the party in it was the trajectory and involvement in radical black politics really challenges that notion. Host you mention the black press and of course one of his principal vehicles across this time was the guardian. Can you tell us about that newspaper and its place in the discourse and arguments among black political leaders and radicals of that time. He was not a shrinking violet in his arguments with others of his contemporaries. He had a microphone in the guardian that he used powerfully. Guest trotters newspaper time was in particular black were dominated by the interests. Particularly conservative racial advocates between the north and the south and also this notion that the press should be away to only highlight africanamerican achievement and not highlight the broad political and Economic Issues with africanamericans found drug reconstruction. So the newspaper really became a vehicle for trotter, but also a vehicle for africanamerican people most have whom i found in my research were not involved in the washington debate. Its an academic debate that most people had People Living in new york or chicago were not really involved. What were those people actually talking about . The newspaper was a great way on how it is for this black culture being used in the form and that for the most part,