The Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries present “Poverty – A Discussion with Matthew Desmond" -- May 13.
Tuesday, May 13, 7 p.m.
Presented by the Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries
The recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship who, in 2016, was also named one of Politico's “50 people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate," a Pulitzer Prize winner engages in virtual conversation with a Chicago-based journalist in Poverty – A Discussion with Matthew Desmond, the May 13 event with Desmond and Natalie Moore presented by Illinois Libraries Present and the Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries.
A sociologist, Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, and author of the award-winning book Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City, Desmond's research focuses on poverty in the United States, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. Desmond was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022, and was formerly the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He studied as an undergraduate at Arizona State University, serving at the same time as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in Tempe, and in 2002, Desmond graduated from ASU with a B.S. degree, summa cum laude in communications and justice studies. Additionally, he received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010.
Desmond was awarded a Harvey Fellowship in 2006 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015, and he won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, and the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for his work about poverty, Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City. His 2017 Pulitzer Prize citation read, "For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty."
Desmond will be joined in his virtual May 13 conversation by Natalie Moore, an award-winning journalist based in Chicago whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice, and violence. She is the author of the acclaimed The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago & American Segregation and co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall & Resurgence of an American Gang. Moore is the recipient of Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award and a Studs Terkel Community Media Award among many others, and her work has helped shift the way Chicagoans today think about segregation in the region.
This virtual event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present, a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).
The virtual program Poverty – A Discussion with Matthew Desmond will take place on May 13, participation in the 7 p.m. event is free, and more information is available by calling (309)732-7323 and visiting RockIslandLibrary.org, and calling (309)755-3393 and visiting SilvisLibrary.org.
