Company. As a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Welcome everybody, i am the dean at the Journalism School and im very pleased to welcome you to tonights conversation with the 2020 prizewinners, i am sorry we are conducting this conversation virtually rather than in the room at columbia, i hope her 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 among the folks who are being honored tonight. What were going to do tonight is try to concentrate on the substance rather than the ceremony since zoom is not a capacious place to exchange awards and the like so we will have a series of conversations with our four winners and then walk us through that, when we are done we will take your questions in chat and we will try to wrap up in an hour using the zoom best practice of not leaving you in front of your computer screen for too long of time especially this time of day. As we get started, those of you who may be new to the awards and to the legacy that they honor, we have a short video about the lucas prizes. People talk about they almost always talk about the process of writing, sitting there by the keyboard and writing it down, its in many respects not the most important because the most important part is the report. You been an incredibly diligent reporter but the devotion it was detailed and serious but also and entertaining as well. He had a set of ideas about nonfiction writing and what he really hoped for is he would be an elevation of Nonfiction Book writing to the level of literature. He cared so much and you really cared so much about other people support in this area, and he said i want to do something and Carry Forward the way he carried sebastian. He won this award and have the power and on and on, we think of them as a lead group of american authors who inspired the volume you see. Its a history pride and none of us will be possible without the support. As we talk about what narrative nonfiction, there is an idea of not just this one award. What got the award it allowed me to die even more deeply and take more time, it was also the institutional legitimacy especially for firsttime author, and gave me confidence. The prizes so meaningful, this kind of work, narrative nonfiction with serious and incredibly entertaining is exactly what i wanted to do when i grew up. Tony lucas did in his words, many of our winners do daily, they land storytime with a social conscience. An idea was to hold tony and his work for authors and if you look at the two decades now, i think you can say its kind of an mp on of excellence. Welcome back everybody, you can see why we are so proud at columbia to be the stewards of these prices and i want to think the justice and the Board Members who participated this year in renewing this commitment to the work that tony left us and also to think the past winners for being with us tonight and we look forward to hearing from some of you and what was mentioned in the film, we have a great family for their support of this institution as its become, now let me introduce the four winners that we will speak with tonight and that we are honoring here together. First alex is the lukas prize winter this year for an american summer, life and death in chicago, welcome alex. Hi steve, thank you for having me. Good to see you in chicago. The lukas prize that were celebrating carries a 10000, he is the author there are no children here and several other books including this which has a relationship by family tree with no children here and he works at the times magazine, the new yorker and adapted for this American Life which he also authored and hes a resident at northwestern university. Carrie is the winner of the history prize, also carries the 10000 honorarium and shes being honored for her book black radical, the life and times of William Trotter and carrie has been filmed by zoom glitches but if she is here i welcome her, carrie are you here . There you are. She teaches in tough colonialism where shes the director of the program in american studies and also the codirector of the africanamerican object. She is from massachusetts and we will try to fix her microphone. Now we turn to the two winners of the works in progress award that they talked about so well in the video, its really a distinctive institution of american nonfiction and journalism, 25000dollar prize for two works in progress each year and this years winners are shot on, for his book, american callous, the true story of americas first homegrown is ohmic terror attack, welcome. Thank you and hes a journalist and professor of journalism at the university of Richmond Virginia and he previously worked as a reporter to Christian Science monitor and a grant scholar in india where he researched political slump and then our second work in progress a winner tonight is by elmore for his forthcoming book on the past and future approved. Welcome. Thank you a pleasure to be here. Nice to see you in ohio, bart is an associate professor in a core faculty member of ohio state sustainability and the class of 2017 National American foundation, his first book was fitness and cope as an cocacola, the making of cocacola capitalism and the examined Environmental Impact worldwide operation. So i will try to hold myself to about ten minutes or less with each of the four winners starting with the two work in progress winners and then 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. So let me start with you, your book is about one of the big subjects in American Environmental debate in the global debate can medically have a good thing in a dangerous thing and how impactful they are, i was struck and the reason i understood is the view and the risks and the impacts of dfm that you find that monsanto has not 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 the finding in your work. Absolutely, i want to say thanks to the Prize Committee as well, such a crazy moment when were all here on zoom and these prices go along way to help us out to finishing the project. I just want to say thank you so much. I should say when i started this, i really did not think it was not the gmos that first drew me in. When i started it, i was writing the caffeine chapter on cocacola, trying to figure out cocacola got its caffeine from and it turned out monsanto was the supplier. Weirdly they had exchanges around the world in a recycling system. I got hooked on that and i ended up going in finding their archives at Washington University and i just dove into the story. And to your point, i did not know what would be the most interesting finding, being at ohio state is a tremendous Agricultural Institution with top lead scientist, i became fascinated with the questions of what do we actually know that were 20 years or more than 20 years from the first introduction and resistant and herbicide tolerant genetically engineered, really to your point, what stuck in stood out the data on young and 20 years ago that we need these things to feed the yield of these genetically engineered perhaps it would be so much more than what we had before, we have to accept all the other cost and everything else, that did not end up being so. I ended up interviewing the top scientist for the National Academy of Sciences Study at North Carolina state and asked him, am i reading this right, the yield data seems to be the same when we look at conventional and he said yep, that is what were seen, for me that is a really important thing to be discussing. Everything about the future of food, i think historians, what i do, we can weigh in on this, we now have 20 plus years of data and questions about whether the promise of productivity is only true. So not an impressive result, very dramatic effect nonethele nonetheless, you right among santos in this Enterprises Re shaping global ecosystem how has a habit of the 20 years do you have a net assessment as this radical altering and monstrously damaging or beneficial or is it just change and difficult to describe in those terms. One of the most interesting, went to vietnam in the same company that produced h r, we have Chemical Data as well, if you look at volume, production, monsanto produced more and what was interesting there, here is a company that is coming into vietnam selling the seeds of life, interestingly quorum and if you think about the cuisines but you know that location was really interesting, how did something overcome that pass, down the street from the headquarters where i walked in unannounced in a museum that talks about month santos in their impact on the environment, that was an interesting story but i point to brazil when i think about the global impact, one of the big issues right now is a herbicide which is just emerged in the last several years as a way of dealing with roundup resistant weeds, we sprayed so much roundup which is an herbicide that month santos sold since the 1970s that we became resistant to it, so to deal with this, monsanto now in german own company is selling the stack genetically engineered seeds that have both resistance to roundup and resistance to die camera. The problem with that is very volatile. Particularly in hot climates and one of the things that weve seen in the United States is that zicam but has drifted, when you spray the herbicide is volatile and jumps in the air and will spread on to other farms, if you dont have zicam but engineered seeds, your farm gets hit and theres court cases ive sat in and on the United States were farmers are limited about this and been affected by this. When i went to brazil, this scared the heck out of the people there, the farmers i talked to, the wheat scientist in brazil because they were just approving the zicam boa system and if you think about hot climate in the sonata, its tropical environment, the side campus bread in the way that that will force to farmers who dont want to get genetically engineered seeds, it is a really concerning problem for the future, we are talking a lot about roundup, but i think zicam a is the next big story. Thank you, theres so much more here but with an eye on that i will move, i think reading your excerpts in your book proposals is a reminder of what the decade of the 1970s were starting with kent state and indian with events of one bombing after another, this was in a enormous crisis as you point out, i dont remember what was in your proposal but what you would explain to people of what the book was about, they would often say i think first we need to ask you to please remind us what it was exactly as simply as possible, when it happened, where did happen will happen. In three days in march 1977, march 9 through 11, about 40 hours in total with three locations in washington, d. C. Were taken by three armand and all from the same group and they took about a hundred 50 hostages in three locations, we have three locations which is en rhode island avenue in massachusetts avenue. In the district building right across the street from the white house. And they all came from this group who were headquartered in washington, d. C. And under the leadership of this man. For three days straight, it was a completely dominating Network Evening news and it was on the front page of the newspapers across every small town newspaper, big city news paper across the world this was Headline News for three days. And it ended after three days after three local ambassadors decided to enter the neighbors with a hostage leader was and try to negotiate and so the kinds of events if they were to happen today, there is no way i can imagine we would forget about this, considering the elements, there was something about that. , there is a lot happening and what it meant to americans how to the hostagetaking for the sake of our audience. Spoiler alert. It was a deadly event, there were casualties but in the end the ambassador was able to talk, they had a facetoface meeting in the presence of unarmed Police Officers and they were able to convince Office Leader to let all the hostages go to let the hostage leader walked out and he slept in bed that night and that is the third act of the book. Thinking of the kind of narrative, nonfiction that he honors, here you have a tight event that is right for narration with detail and character and setting but in some distance in the past, you need rich sourcing, how did you discover materials or the survivors who could really bring the story beyond the yellow newspaper clipping to a different level of reader experience. I am very lucky to caught this at the moment i did. Because im now 40 years old and a lot of people are around, every kind of moment of the story of the 40 hours there were moments in the negotiating room in the Police Command center, the hostage places where they were being kept hostage, every location ive been able to find people who witnessed it firsthand. And people in their 70s and 80s and some in their 90s, one of the local ambassadors survived, there are three and one of them in the ambassador to the you knighted states listen in switzerland where i was able to meet. Ive been able to find people in a lot of the hostages, but really relying on memory of an event would not have been enou enough, ive been really lucky with his resources and satisfying and as a reporter to be able to get the evidence from Washington Metropolitan Police department and fbi was my main character for over 25 years so ive been able to get those but it took a while. But there was an extent in cases after it all ended in a narrative perspective of somebody crating the narrative of being able to use these an interview with sources but also have really good rich archival material and material to rely on. I could go on as with bart but i want to welcome terry into the conversation, are you with us. Can you hear me . I can. You found a solution. It looks ingenious. It is, i apologize, historian technology is not my strong although i been teaching on zoom for the last couple of weeks, congratulations to you. We have dozens of folks in students and others listening in and i was grateful for the opportunity to read about the life about charter and i must confess that i really did not know much about, i first knew about the time that we lived in but the centrality of the trajectory that he had on the spectrum but the action and response of jim crow was absolutely fascinating and to think hardly because he came from boston but the ideology that he wrestled with and expressed, if its not too difficult, introduce us to why you are drawn with him as a biographical subject and what about his project tree flew the 21st years of the last century and you thought needed to be eliminated at this link and scale and it was neglected in our received history. I approached his life from the perspective that boston, new england in areas outside of the postreconstruction south are often ignored when we have conversations about our political and racial history. And particularly this motion that a place like boston is often is cut in a time. In the civil war and abolitionist in douglas in such in the civil war and not a lot between the civil war in the 1970s and the idea that we have, ive been wanting to get into what was happening in a place that we often dont think of of having number one original footprint outside of evolution in 20th century civil rights and what does it look like when you have somebody like trotter who is arguing for pretty radical notions at a time when historically they would say that that came later. I grew up hearing about trotter for my grandparents who were activists when i went to graduate school and received my doctorate, i went in to do research on him and i would often frustrated that my advis advisor, there was a notion that you could not do a history of black people outside the south between 1865 and 1930s. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is a test and with that trajectory and those politics challenges that. You mentioned the black press and those vehicles across this time like the guardian can you tell us about that newspaper and its place in the discourse and the arguments and intellectuals of that. Because you were not a street on a shrinking violet with booker t and the guardian that he used powerfully. And then to be again at that time. And that was by the interest in particular we advocate and also the notion that the press should be away only to highlight africanamerican achievement and not the Economic Issues but something africanamericans followed reconstruction as i argue in the book, it became a vehicle for africanamerican people most of whom i found in my research were not involved in the booker t. Washington washington debate the academic debate those that are living in new york or chicago thats what the people that is talking about in the newspapers a great way to look how it is how this black consciousness is created in the format that was dominated by the interest and political debate. So the newspaper i said something in the introduction and then the 20th century with the power of newspapers and independent for political activism and consciousness who previously were considered disenfranchised and to mobilize that the end of the reconstruction and they could exercise dual activism. The question that you use naturally phrases like conservative and radical so in the context of boston and new york in that period, how would you describe the ideology and context . A radical in the fact of tradition of africanamerican people and how they look at themselves with slavery so with that tradition of somebody who fundamentally believe that africanamerican people should decide based on their own needs and desires and it should not be dictated by people who call themselves race men or women and that for africanamerican people specifically but somebody who really did not believe that either Political Party served with africanamerican people and he really believed that was in terms of the interest to the africanamerican people economically and socially. Thank you for that and for the book. Congratulations on the prize im sure we will circle back when we get to audience questions in a few minutes. Thank you so much. Now we will turn to Alex Kotlowitz who has dedicated his career to documenting the toll and context of gun violence in chicago. He wrote there are no children here he is celebrated even almost 30 years it was publishe published. He has dedicated himself over a long period of time to these issues. I was struck in the way from the book and i dont want to mischaracterize the book but to set up the narrative when you do this with the narrative you guide the reader by saying this is not a book about solutions or Public Policy. I have no idea what will work or what will change the environment and i dont want to pretend i am guiding you toward insights public action. I read that two ways. One was signaling this is about what happened and who was there so please abandon your aspirations of a narrative but also i have been with this subject for so long and now im at a loss. Also this award is such a honor. Please stand and i remember meeting tommy graham and somehow to create literature or at least aspire to. So this honor means a lot. So i do have this confession in the front of the book it isnt a book about Public Policy or present solutions and part of that is a feel very strongly when we tell stories mine isnt to answer questions but to ask them so my hope is by going out in ultimately telling the stories we began to ask questions. And not so much about the gun violence the profound equity in the cities and the violence is very much a symptom. And really i feel so strongly in the power of narrative. And so when you tell the small intimate stories speaking is something larger. All of the winners tonight are teachers as well as writers. You are a writer in residence after many master classes of the methodologies you have developed over all these years. This immersion project is bound that as you can describe i am sure theres only so much you can control when you decide to immerse in a particular timeframe. How did you shaped this character as reporting. So and then to wade into the water and what ive got myself into so i knew that i needed some boundaries of this warm arbitrary summer and those like to find a way and there were other stories that happened earlier to place them in the summer talking about the aftermath of certain events. So i thought what was going to be a summer i just spent close to a year talking to people looking for stories. Wasnt entirely sure what i was looking for but i knew i would know when i heard it. So i had this large cast of characters and how they keep track of them and the short stories and some of the stories and others that were selfcontained but i will tell you i think i had this experience secondary trauma and also with the structure i remember having dinner with my friend the cartoonist we had dinner every two weeks before this pandemic member saying just tell the story. And then to piece it together like a puzzle. And my hope is that it holds together as a whole and in fact my presence is the scaffolding so that i can find my way from story to story from individuals. And i imagine that you are the scaffolding just to continue the instruction portion of the conversation for the graduate students, yes , when you are selecting characters and stories to try to weave into that you are evaluating for the intrinsic powers that knocks you back or surprises you but i presume youre thinking about the landscape you want something of a whole to be represented or to resonate beyond that experience so what is the whole landscape . What drove me to the book was the notion that i do think that people are numb to the violence it shapes their lives and they work really hard to keep that from defining them and then to make that connection between the violence and poverty and the isolation we have seen in this country. So looking some way the trust and of course the other part to come across Great Stories of what you are asking of people when youre asking for access so there were stories that i came across for reasons of their owns did not want to share their stories but then also those that were self reflective and wanted to share their stories. Thank you. There are some questions arriving in chat and i will just start perusing and sharing some of them with you one specifically here what are the demands of the hostage takers during this crisis from whatever suspense brought to that quick. They have to be very disparate demands but to motivate the straw that broke the camels back the trigger was the release of a hollywood biopic of the islamic prophet mohammed. And 1997 movie called messenger of god that was released marc march 9th so thats a new is premiering in new york and los angeles and they deemed it to be sacrilegious we can see maybe the relevance and more recent events but yes that was a major demand they wanted the movie pulled in a said mohammed was being portrayed on film when she was not the movie was made by a muslim man and immigrant to america and there were other demands as well so that story is framed by those 40 hours but its tracing the long history of the central characters coming into this 40 hours. Also what happened before this this persons own family the hostage taker was murdered from a crime from four years earlier in 1873 so they began delivering the murders were he would presumably be have them although he never said that publicly. And then also just a reimbursement of money so it spans all whole range and where the injustice has been done. So just to be the thread. And blasphemy is politically informed. About five minutes ago i had this little reflection about how wonderful it was to be in a room with such great riders and enriching conversation and not talk about the pandemic. And to and the reverie we like to hear each of the authors talk about how the pandemic is playing out. The first in agriculture and then chicago and those are the most relevant. That has the immediate effect at the stockholders meeting and i got one share actually worth the amazing historians but we did not learn journalism so i thought buying a share sounds great and i will tell you the zoom version of the Shareholders Meeting was six hours straight. No breaks. No breaks literally watching zoom 4 00 a. M. In germany until i dont know what time it was when i gave up. It was interesting because here is the interesting confluence with this company that is on the cutting edge of healthcare and talking a great deal about the pandemic but the exact moment in the stockholders meeting peppered what is happening with this lawsuit or another lawsuit. Its an interesting merger with bear and monsanto and big pharma. So there is a roundup story and life will skate and cancer caused in these discussions are ongoing but also sole medication that helps you deal with cancer so there is an interesting story here you can see it in that pandemic moment in the Shareholders Meeting so in this roundup litigation look at their health and dealing with that pandemic right now. So it was a magic trick and after six hours on zoom i crashed pretty hard. Its not fun to go to a stockholders meeting on zoom. How serious is their liability . Huge. They have shareholders that are suing the company. Last year the leadership had a vote of noconfidence talking about billions of dollars if you go back to 2008 since we are all on the computers when the first round of case was decided to hundred 85 million for one person. And then those cases came the big verdict recently wires in january and you can see that again so that is the solution to roundup that now you can see they are both problematic so they will try to settle as fast as they can. And then to pass to the lives of the people that you chronicle and the communities that they belong to. That was the first city with that disparity of the epidemic in the minority communities. And a lot of that had to do with the underlying conditions. With lack of access to healthcare but also the stress and trauma of individuals. So there is a shared distress. It is way to build community to be profoundly isolated by geographically and spiritually. So maybe this is a way in some manner will connect us. The sole subject after the pandemic will be a rich one. The words all together i will not try to separate the names. Urging africanamericans to in their best interest and then to encourage black americans in those years. That strategy is that he argued although africanamericans on a National Level cannot sway and election through 1912 and Woodrow Wilson particularly outside of the south from when they were disenfranchised but africanamericans in the north and in the west and the swing voters and use that term in somebody that is africanamerican that could vote and vote on every single level governor, bear and whatever candidate appeals to the black community. And those various amounts of elections. And to get africanamericans to swing to the democrats but that stronghold for republicans. To answer your question his mantra was that politics had to happen because they had portrayed the 14 and 15 and 16 amendment. And they both had to be done based on whichever person or whatever policy for the needs of africanamerican people. Those are vote for Woodrow Wilson there is evidence with a stronghold like massachusetts and ohio and what happened he betrayed those promises but that people had no choice and that election because to the act of not protecting the law. So in that sense i argue he was radical he was saying that voting should be done the demands of the Africanamerican Community but they should not put all their eggs in one basket for a party that has betrayed u us. So definitely somebody was at heart really believed that you should not vote for parties and with those electorate officials from those who voted them into office. So to catch up with a scholarship of your generation and see it across the board with those big biographies like Frederick Douglass and others that one big last year or the year before. Obviously what the American History but talking about the leadership of different eras what other errors do you think that your generation of scholars see that have not been researched or written with the originality and that revisionism understood one required . And they are proud and those sexuality and gender and that i can concentrate on and in the 19 twenties and 1930s and then what is going on in that era and therefore those africanamerican people and with those race relations. And in that moment in American History that we take for granted as historians and then that revolutionary era that are evaluating what that looks like. And africanamerican in history. And that political and moral consciousness of the country even though we dont think africanamerican people and to have an effect. And one last round and Vanessa Rodriguez and to have the most experience and then to resurrect that you had while either writing or researching this book and that satisfaction. And the characters in the book a young man and as he was walking a tight rope and trying to figure out in the world and then to graduate from Depaul University and with his last name in the book with a crime you have committed with a couple of months ago before the pandemic and with mayor lightfoot and to say just want to make sure and then to take ownership and it was just remarkable. And then i am so proud and then to finally make sense. And those loving monsanto. And what other moments of discovery. Along like alex we are so lucky to meet people on these journeys and that it has traveled with me. And then to get into various headquarters. And what the biggest moment related to this a student in my class what i was just teaching on i told him i was going to the trial on saturday to travel. And then he said im coming with you. And said you have two days to come up with a plane ticket. [laughter] i want to be at this trial he said i dont care because and with the electronics and then to write down these things and then to walk out of that trial and then this will be great so its just that moment to embrace the importance of this moment that the time you get to spend with people that travel with us on these journeys im so lucky i never get tired of those three words rush limbaugh. [laughter] in the District Court of missouri south of st. Louis. And then stephen the bar was the judge. And very different character for sure. Now you had plenty of time to choose one. And with that moment. And then the real challenge and many of them are now free. And then to spend some time with him. And then into construct that of the 12 men that has entered i never met day hostage taker 20 years after the fact and there is amazing work for those that are getting out of prison and to know how supportive Colorado State with the blue state funding to expand and Halfway Houses and it is an important character and it was a reminder and its very complex but there is no easy way to paid to these characters. It was a special moment to see and how you have come back and that one special moment i can think of. And then it was very difficult to find records in the 19 twenties. And then just to be hearsay. And then in the archives and massachusetts and to find the fbi records. And then in 1918. And then it was documented. With a radicalism in the way that was feared. By the power structure. And that was the moment where they could come together and that history of africanamericans the radical by the government. Take you for that question. Take you to our speakers. Congratulations to all four of you. So fully deserved and what a pleasure to spend time with you and to understand and where these are coming from. And then click on the links in the chat. To read the books normally we have a chance to connect you and the bookstore and these are wonderful ways during to be connected during the miserable pandemic and again congratulations everyone thank you for putting this together so take care the oldfashioned way next year i trust