BOOKS: Alex Kotlowitz, Jonathan Schuppe and Jonathan Alter in a Lukas Prize Project conversation

The J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project and the Columbia Journalism School present a conversation between award-winning writers Alex Kotlowitz and Jonathan Schuppe. Alex Kotlowitz is perhaps best known for the bestselling THERE ARE NO CHILDREN HERE: The story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. He is also the author of the much acclaimed THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER , and of NEVER A CITY SO REAL and has contributed to numerous magazines and and newspapers including The New Yorker and the New York Times, and produced and written shows for Public Radio and television. He is currently working on a documentary with director Steve James, which follows the efforts of a group of Chicago men and women, most of them former gang members to interrupt the flow of violence in their neighborhoods. Jonathan Schuppe has served as a staff writer for Newark, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, covering politics, government and city crime,. There he was part of a team of reporters that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. He currently covers Manhattan as a reporter/producer for DNAinfo.com and is working on a book about one man’s dedication to helping children in one of the most crime torn sections of Newark through the building of a Little League baseball team. This work in the making won the 2010 Lukas Work in Progress Award. Listen in as they discuss the challenges of narrative non-fiction, of representing the lives of those who have too little representation, and much more. Jonathan Alter, Columnist and Senior Editor for Newsweek, contributing correspondent to NBC News and author of THE DEFINING MOMENT and most recently the bestselling THE PROMISE: President Obama Year One, will open the conversation and moderate the question and answer session after. But first Linda Healey, co-chair with Arthur Gelb of The Lukas Prize Project, will tell us a bit about the Project and The Lukas Work in Progress Award.