"Race, Poverty, and Housing in American Cities: What do we do now? A Conversation Between Matthew Desmond and Alex Kotlowitz"

Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond (MacArthur 2015) takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. In Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Desmond argues that eviction is an active cause of poverty, not merely a reflection of it. Combining extraordinary storytelling with meticulous research, Evicted has been praised as a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that “has set a new standard for reporting on poverty” (Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review) Desmond will be joined in conversation by author and journalist Alex Kotlowitz.

About Matthew Desmond:
MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond’s New York Times bestselling book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, draws on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data. It was named one of the Top Books of 2016 by nearly three dozen outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Kirkus, Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal. Including it on her personal best-of-the-year list, Jennifer Senior of the New York Times also called it 2016’s most “unignorable” book: “Nothing else this year came close.”

About Alex Kotlowitz:
Alex Kotlowitz is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author who has been exploring issues of race and poverty in America for over twenty years. His 1991 book, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, garnered national recognition for its compassionate and unflinching portrait of Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers and their lives growing up in a public housing project in inner city Chicago.