Alissa Quart
Alissa Quart is an award-winning journalist based in Brooklyn. She is the author of four books of nonfiction, including “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America” (Ecco/HarperCollins) and “Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers” (Basic). Her two books of poetry include “Thoughts and Prayers” (OR Books). She is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and writes for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian and The New York Times. Her most recent multimedia work is the critically acclaimed EHRP podcast “Going for Broke with Ray Suarez,” a show devoted to complex, lively portraits of those experiencing economic struggle. Her honors include an Emmy, a Nieman Fellowship, Columbia University’s Journalism School Alumna of the Year and an ASME nomination. She has taught nonfiction widely, most recently at Brown University.
During the fellowship, Alissa will work on reported features and op-eds around the themes of her forthcoming nonfiction book “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream” (Ecco/HarperCollins. The book is an examination of how the story “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” became our country’s central myth. She will also be developing and scripting the second season of “Going for Broke With Ray Suarez.”