Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott to give lecture at Wright State on Nov. 14

Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Andrea Elliott, a journalist and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, will give a lecture on her book “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City” at Wright State University.

Elliott’s talk will take place on Monday, Nov. 14, from 9:15 to 10:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of the Dunbar Library. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Attendees are encouraged to bring new socks to donate to a sock drive organized by the  Student Advisory Board of the Wright State College of Health, Education and Human Services in partnership with Shoes4theShoeless.

In “Invisible Child,” Elliott expands on her 2013 series for The New York Times about Dasani, a homeless New York schoolgirl, and her family. An intimate portrait of the family, the book is also a searing account of poverty and addiction, and of the city and country’s repeated failures to address those issues.

“Invisible Child” follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a homeless New York schoolgirl, and her family as they navigate the education, child welfare, addiction and mental health, and criminal justice systems. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, the book goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north.

Elliott’s lecture will help students, faculty, staff and community members to learn more about the complexity and multidisciplinary implications of the social problems rooted in poverty. Students, educators and social and human services providers will be encouraged to rethink their roles in addressing these issues and to take steps to engage in the community for good.

“Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and was named the runner-up of the 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction.

Copies of the book are available for check-out at Dunbar Library, through OhioLINK, and SearchOhio.

Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and a former staff writer at The Miami Herald. She has documented the lives of poor Americans, Muslim immigrants and other people on the margins of power.

She received the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, a George Polk award, an Overseas Press Club award and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.

She has served as an Emerson Collective fellow at New America, a visiting journalist at the Russell Sage Foundation and a visiting scholar at the Columbia Population Research Center, and is the recipient of a Whiting Foundation grant.

Raised in Washington, D.C., by a Chilean mother and an American father, she attended Occidental College before earning a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has received honorary doctorates from Occidental College and Niagara University.

Elliott’s lecture is sponsored by the College of Health, Education and Human Services in partnership with the Division of Inclusive Excellence and the University Libraries.