Eli Saslow

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage for The Washington Post, Eli Saslow, “one of the great young journalists in America,” covers the impact of some of the most pressing national issues and policy decisions on individual lives, from racism and poverty to addiction and school shootings. His ongoing oral history project for The Washington Post, Voices from the Pandemic, collects the accounts of ordinary people touched by COVID-19. Saslow’s latest book, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, charts the rise of white nationalism through the experiences of one person who abandoned everything he was taught to believe. Of the book, Ibram X Kendi says, “The story of Derek Black is the human being at his gutsy, self-reflecting, revolutionary best, told by one of America’s best storytellers at his very best. Rising Out of Hatred proclaims if the successor to the white nationalist movement can forsake his ideological upbringing, can rebirth himself in antiracism, then we can too no matter the personal cost. This book is an inspiration.” Saslow won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for a yearlong series about food stamps in the United States, later collected into the book American Hunger.  Saslow’s first book, Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President, grew out of his fascination with President Obama’s daily habit of reading ten letters he had received from Americans and offers lens through which to understand who we are as Americans. His next book, Voices from the Pandemic, will come out in September.