At columbia i hope we are back together again next year and the way we annually 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 the folks being honored tonight. What we are going to do tonight is try to concentrate on the substance rather than the ceremonies since zoom is not a place to exchange awards and the like. We will have a series of conversations with our four winners and then when we are done we will take your questions in chat and try to wrap up in an hour using zoom best practice of not leaving you in front of your computer screen for too long a time, especially this time of day. For those of you new to the awards, we have a short video about j anthony with his prizes. People talk about book writing they almost always talk about the process of writing, sitting at the keyboard writing it down is in many respects not the most important because most important part is the report. An incredibly diligent order in a really oldfashioned devotion to fact. Told standard work was detailed and serious but also an entertaining as well. He had this set of ideas about nonfiction. What he hoped is that it would be an elevation 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 and went to arthur gail and said, and what to do something to Carry Forward what tony cared so passionately about. [pause for clip] we think about his elite group of american authors who aspire to the kind of ashe would see in tonys work. Then is what we called history track which is named for the late anone of this would be possible without the support of family. As we talked about what narrative nonfiction met to tony, there emerged the idea of not just this one award but a work of words. It really allowed me to delving more deeply to take more time also give me this institution help in legitimacy especially for firsttime author gave me confidence. The prize was so meaningful to me because this kind of work, narrative nonfiction both serious and incredibly entertaining, is exactly what i wanted to do when i grew up. What tony lucas did in his work in many of our winners do in their work as they blend storytelling with a social conscience. An idea was to hold tony and his work up for standardbearers in his authors and if you look at the two decades now of prizewinners i think you can say the award has really done that its a pantheon of excellence. Welcome back everybody. You can see why we are so proud at columbia to be the stewards of these prizes and i want to thank the judges and Board Members who participated this year in renewing this commitment to the kind of work that tony left us. Also to thank the past winners for being with us tonight and we look forward to hearing from some of you and as was mentioned in the film emma we have a owe a great debt to the lincoln family for their support of its institution its become let me introduce the four winners we will speak with tonight and we are honoring here together. First abthe lukas prizewinner this year for abwelcome alex. Thank you for having me. Good to see you in chicago. And the lukas prize we are celebrating with alex tonight carries 10,000 honorarium. Alex is the author of National Bestseller there are no children here. Which has a relationship with family tree with no children here. And hes worked has appeared in the times magazine, new yorker and adapted for this American Life which is also authored and a writer in residence at northwestern university. Carrie branch the winner this year at the abhistory prize also carries a 10,000 honorarium and shes being honored for her book black radical, the lives and times of William Monroe trotter. Carrie has been followed by zoom glitches but if shes here, i welcome her. Carrie, are you here . There you are. You might not be able to hear you but we can see you. I hope you can hear us. Carrie teaches in ab colonialism and shes the director of the program in american studies and also the codirector of the africanamerican trail project. Shes joining us from massachusetts and we will try to fix her microphone. Now we turn to the two winners of the works in progress award that beth maisie talked about so well in the video. Its really a distinctive institution of american nonfiction in journalism 25,000 prize for two works in progress each year. This years winners are sean must be toward his book american callus the true story of the Americans First homegrown islamic terror attack. Its a professor of journalism at the university of richmond in virginia. Our second works in progress award winner tonight is barts amort for his past and future of food. Welcome bart. Nice to see you in ohio. Bart is associate professor there of environmental history and a core faculty member of Ohio State Sustainability Institute and the class of 2017 National Fellow of new american foundation. His first book was citizen cope as an cocacola the making of cocacola capitalism and it examines the Environmental Impact of coke worldwide operations. So, i will try to hold myself to about 10 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 15 minutes to the hour we will welcome your questions and i will try to pass those around to her guests. Bart, let me start with you your book is about the global debate and discourse of whether to modify our foods, dangerous thing, how impactful they are and i was struck by one of the abyou find that monsanto hasnt really delivered on their promise that genetically engineered seeds havent advanced agricultural productivity to the degree forecasted or promised. Can you say a little bit more about that finding your work . Absolutely. I also just want to say thank you to the presley as well such a crazy moment we are all here on zoom in these prizes go a long way to help us out finishing this project. I just wanted to say thank you so much. When i started this i really didnt think it was at the gmos that first drew me in. When i started it it was actually i was writing the caffeine chapter on cocacola check to figure out where cocacola got its caffeine from it it turned out that monsanto was their chief caffeine supplier. Weirdly they produced it abof all things. Tea leaves that were left around on t exchanges around the world. In this recycling system. I got hooked on that. Ended up going to watch you fighting there archives there no Washington University and i went to the story and to your point, i didnt know what was to be the most interesting finding but being at ohio state which is also a tremendous aquacultural institution with top lead scientist i really became fascinated with these questions of what do we actually know now that we are 20 years or more a little bit more than 20 years now from the first introduction of ab herbicide tolerant design genetically engineered seeds relate to your point, what stock what really stood out was the data on yield. That 20 years ago the argument was, we need these things to feed the world. That the yield of these genetically engineered crops will be so much more than what we had before and i took that as a given. Weve got to accept all these costs herbicide cost and Everything Else but that didnt end up being so. It ended up interviewing the top scientists for the National Academy of Sciences Study fred gould at North Carolina state and asked him, am i reading this right . The yield data seems to be the same as when we look at conventional thread. Its kind of what we are seeing. So for me i think its really important thing for us to be discussing. If we are thinking about the future of foods i think now historians what i do we can weigh in on this we now have 20 years of data and i think there are real questions about whether the promise of productivity is really holding true. So not an impressive result but a very dramatic effect nonetheless you write that monsanto is kind of Seed Enterprises are radically reshaping global ecosystems. 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 as this radical altering demands firmly demonstrably beneficial and damaging urges changed as you would rate as difficult to describe in those terms . Great question. I think one of the most interesting journeys i did a couple journeys one to vietnam because they are whats fascinating is the same company that produced agent orange. No doubt Chemical Data as well but if you look at volume production monsanto actually produced more agent orange. What was interesting there was heres a company thats now coming in to vietnam sowing seeds of life interestingly, korn of all things would you think about vietnamese cuisine this is interesting, but that location was really interesting to think about, how did somebody overcome that past . Literally down the street from headquarters where i walked in kind of unannounced is a museum talks about monsantos agent orange and their impacts on that environment. We became really resistant to it. So to do with this, monsanto, German Company is selling stacked seeds that resistance to round up and resistance to die can do. The problem is is very volatile, particular in hot climates and one thing we seem in the United States it has drifted, when you spray the herbicide and volatile and will jump in side the air, if you dont have the resistant genetically engineered seeds, your farms get hit and theres court cases i sat in here in the United States where farmers are livid about this that the forms of been affected by this. When i went to brazil, this get the heck out of the farmers out of there. The scientists of top universities in brazil, they were just approving it there. If you think about hot climate, is tropical environment, this i can both spread in the way that will force compliance for farmers you dont want to get genetically engineered seeds. Its a really concerning problem for the future. Were talking about rhonda but i think i cam a is the next big story. Thank you, so much more here, we will move on, i think reading your accidents in your book proposals was what a decade the 1970s were starting with kent state, wasnt that in the 70s and ending with events, one primate after another this was an enormous crisis that you point out, i dont remember what was in your proposal but when you explain to people what this book was about, they would often say why has no book been written about this before. So i think first, we need to ask you to please remind us what it was exactly, simply as possible, when did happen, where did i happen and what happened. In three days, march 1977, march 9 through 11, 40 hours in total with three locations in washington, d. C. Were taken over by three groups of armed men, all from the same group and they took about 100 close to 150 hostages in these three locations, the three locations were rhode island avenue, and the massachusetts avenue and then the district building that is now the donelson building right across the street from the white house and they all came from a group from muslim, they were headquartered in washington, d. C. And under the leadership of this man. And for three days straight, three nights it was a completely dominating Network Evening news was the front pages of the newspapers and with small town newspapers across the world, this is Headline News for days, and it ended after three days when, after three muslim ambassadors decided to enter where the hostage leader was in china negotiate that all. Its a kind of event that would happen today and i imagine we could forget about this, considering the elements here. But there was something about that. , there was a lot happening or perhaps that is something im still exploring, perhaps something about islam and what it meant at that time and to americans. How did the hostage taking . For the sake of our audience. The hostage spoiler alert. Yes, it was a deadly event, there were casualties but in the end the muslim ambassadors were able to talk, then a facetoface meeting in the presence of a couple of unarmed Police Officers but they were able to convince the Office Leader to let all the hostages go and on the condition that the hostage leader also walked out and slept in his bed that night, that is what the third act is. Thinking of a kind of narrative nonfiction that lucas prize honors, here you have a type event narration we detail and character and setting but at some distance in the past and so you need rich sourcing, how did you discover materials or their survivors who could really bring the story beyond the yellow newspaper clippings to a different level of reader experience . Im very lucky to have caught the story of the level that i did because, its over 40 years old but a lot of the people around, every kind of moment of the story of 40 hours, there were moments in the negotiating room in the Police Command center, there hostage in places or people are being kept hostage, every place, every location to almost every place have been able to find people. Im lucky, those people that were in their 30s and 40s are now in their 70s and 80s and some in their 90s, even one of the muslim ambassadors survived, there were three in the last Iranian Ambassador to the United States lives in montross switzerland which i was able to meet. I been there and him very lucky to find people and a lot of the hostages. But relying on memory would not of been enough so are they really lucky with other sources, and really satisfying as a reporter, to be able to get evidence from the Police Department and the fbi was keeping track of my main character for over 25 years, ive been able to get those files. But there was an extensive court cases after it all ended, its been a really satisfying experiment in narrative perspective was somebody creating a narrative of being able to use these in interviews resources but also have really rich archival material and. Material, i could go on but i want to welcome carrie with the conversation, are you with us carrie . Can you hear me . I can, you got a phone as a solution. That looks ingenious. It is. I apologize, technology is not my strong although ive been teaching on zoom for the past couple weeks, thank you for having me and for your patience. Congratulations to you and we have got dozens of folks, students and others listening and and i was grateful for the opportunity to read about the life of William Munro charter who i must confess to my shaming that i did not know very much about, in the times that he lived in in the centrality of his role in the trajectory that he had on the spectrum of black and action in jim crow was absolutely fascinating and distinctive, partly because he came from boston but because of ideologies that he wrestled with and expressed, if it is not too difficult, introduce us to why you are drawn to him as a biographical subject and what about his trajectory drew the first 20 years of the last century, you thought needed to be eliminated at this link then the scale and was neglected in our received history of that. I approached his life from the perspective that boston, new england and areas outside of the reconstruction self are often ignored when we have conversations about our brother, on racial political history. In particular the notion that a place like boston is often in the two time. The. Before the civil war in which the abolitionist and to discover and then the civil war and then theres not a lot between the civil war in the 1970s, thats the idea that we have, i do want to get in to what was happening in a place that we dont think of as having number one, a racial component outside of abolition in the 20th century and the civil rights. To know what does it look like when you have is arguing pretty radical motion into a better time when historically they went to bed that came later. I grew up in the new england area and grope hearing about it from a parent when i went to graduate school, and then i received my doctorate, i wanted to research on him and i was often frustrated and i told my advisor through the notion that you cannot do history of black people outside the cell between 85 and 30s because they didnt have a lot of rights in the north in particular for more people to replace the complicated racial history, i certainly believe that charter is one of those people who his life and activism and also his problematic views on justice and particular gender really give us a read into the complicated civil rights in this country and the relationship between africanamericans in the political process, we have a notion that black people could not vote until 1870s, the but was denied and black people somehow magically became democrats after the election ended. But the gop was the party of lincoln and charters trajectory and endowment in electoral politics but also in a radical politics and the challenge of that. Act, you mentioned the black press in one of the vehicles across his time was the guardian, can you tell us about that newspaper and its place in the discourse and the arguments among black political leaders and intellectuals on them. , he was not shrinking violets in his arguments with book routine and others of his contemporary, but he had a megaphone that he is powerfully. Yes, charters began in 1901 and it was a time. When black folks were dominated by the interest in particularly conservative racial advocates and also this notion that the press should be away to only highlight africanamerican achievement and not highlight the political and Economic Issues that were facing africanamerican of reconstruction, the newspaper, i argue in the book, it became a vehicle for charter but also vehicle for africanamerican people, most of whom i found in my research were not involved in the booker t. Washington debate. That was an academic debate but most people, the average person in