June 20 at 7pm
IMMERSIONS
Blending journalism with ethnography, Ted Conover has reported on subcultures by placing himself inside them. Conover will talk about the arc of these immersive experiences, from riding rails with tramps as an undergraduate (Rolling Nowhere) to working as a corrections officer Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing to his latest, Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge.
Conover, a professor of journalism at New York University, considers his immersions “a way to bring readers to social issues they otherwise might not explore,” including immigration, food safety, and alienation.
The Speaker
Ted Conover is the author most recently of Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge, named one of The New Yorker’s best books of 2022. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, an account of his ten months spent working as a corrections officer at New York’s Sing Sing prison, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Conover’s other books include Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes, Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants, Whiteout: Lost in Aspen, The Routes of Man, and Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep. He has written for publications including The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s. Twice his work has been an answer on “Jeopardy!” Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is now professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.