The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in the country for writers... and last year's winners were just announced this week. So today, we're looking back at two nonfiction authors whose books won the accolade. First, journalist Andrea Elliot speaks to Jane Clyson on Here and Now about her book Invisible Child, the story of how a young child's life was directed by homelessness. Then, Tufts University professor Erin Kelly speaks to Debbie Elliott about the autobiography she helped the late artist Winfred Rembert write – a story about civil rights, injustice, and coping through art.
Sabrina McQueen grew up in Walnut Creek and would often see people driving around in purple limos. The locals call them "Purple People," and she's been wondering about them for decades. The group's official name is Lafayette Morehouse and they're one of the few 1960s-era intentional living communes that have survived the decades.
Reported by Jon Brooks. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Sebastian Miño-Bucheli and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Kyana Moghadam, Jessica Placzek, Jen Chien, Carly Severn, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Jenny Pritchett.
Editor's note: This episode has been updated with new statements from Judge Matthew Coghlan. Every election, after breezing through their choices for governor, president, senators, and state reps, Cook County voters face the longest part of the ballot: Circuit Court judges.
Though the candidates running for judge may be the most obscure, judges are the elected officials any voter is most likely to encounter and the ones whose decisions can have the most direct impact on their life. Anytime you get divorced, sue for damages after a car accident, or face accusations of committing a crime — a judge is involved. And once a judge is elected, it’s rare they’ll ever be removed from office. This week, reporter Maya Dukmasova from Injustice Watch answers a question about why that’s the case.
Editor's note: This episode has been updated with new statements from Judge Matthew Coghlan. Every election, after breezing through their choices for governor, president, senators, and state reps, Cook County voters face the longest part of the ballot: Circuit Court judges.
Though the candidates running for judge may be the most obscure, judges are the elected officials any voter is most likely to encounter and the ones whose decisions can have the most direct impact on their life. Anytime you get divorced, sue for damages after a car accident, or face accusations of committing a crime — a judge is involved. And once a judge is elected, it’s rare they’ll ever be removed from office. This week, reporter Maya Dukmasova from Injustice Watch answers a question about why that’s the case.
Money is all things... or it can become all things, says Hernan Diaz, author of Trust. In his new book, readers are presented with narratives on wealth, reality, and a woman set on separating fact from fiction. In an interview on Weekend Edition Saturday, Diaz told Scott Simon that he thought a lot about money in the writing of this book, particularly about its power to warp and test reality. And although he wanted this story to be about money and class, he also wrote a book that gives women agency in narratives they've often been erased from.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the delegates worked hard to create a document that would govern their new country.
At the end of the convention, they had a session titled “Leftover Business.” It was here in the “leftover business” section of the constitutional convention where the Vice Presidency was born.
Some say it has been leftover business ever since.
Learn more about the Vice President of the United States, its history, and the men and women who have held the job on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In the aftermath of the Mexican war for independence, a new bride finds herself alone in a haunted house surrounded by people who don't believe her. It's the plot of Isabel Cañas' debut novel The Hacienda, where she blends romance, terror, and the supernatural to tell a story highly embedded with Mexican culture. In an interview with Weekend Edition Sunday, Cañas told Ayesha Rascoe about the themes she wanted to explore in her novel – colonialism, social status, the syncretism of Catholicism and indigenous practices – and her own fear of darkness.
Minnie Driver's experience with fame has been what she calls "surreal." She's faced the paradox of fame: she wants to be seen, but not that much. In her new memoir Managing Expectations, the British-American actress opens up about the complicated relationships in her life, her childhood, her unexpected path to acting, and her experience as a single mother. In an interview with All Things Considered, Driver told Ailsa Chang that writing this book was an interesting inner-exploration and that it helped her understand many aspects of her own life – and her mother's.
