Sarah Stillman
American journalist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sarah Stillman (born February 19, 1984),[1] is an American professor, staff writer at The New Yorker magazine,[2] and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist focusing on immigration policy,[3] the criminal justice system,[4] and the impacts of climate change on workers.[5]
University of Oxford (DPhil)
Sarah Stillman | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 19, 1984 |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Yale University (BA, MA) University of Oxford (DPhil) |
| Notable awards | George Polk Award (2012, 2021) Hillman Prize (2012) MacArthur Fellow (2016) Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting (2024) |
Education
Stillman was raised in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Georgetown Day School, before attending Yale University.[1][6][7] While in college, she founded and edited an interdisciplinary feminist journal, Manifesta, and co-directed the Student Legal Action Movement, a group devoted to reforming the American prison system.[8][9] At Yale, Stillman taught poetry and writing at to inmates at the men's maximum-security prison in Cheshire, CT.[10] As a senior, she won the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics.[9] She graduated from Yale summa cum laude in 2006 with bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology.[11]
After graduating from Yale, Stillman attended Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship, where she received her DPhil in anthropology.[12][11]
She was a visiting scholar at New York University and has taught at Columbia University[13] and at Yale University.[14] She is also a staff writer for The New Yorker.[15]
Career
In 2008, Stillman traveled to Iraq as a journalist where she was embedded with the 116th Military Police Company.[16][17] She joined The New Yorker in 2012. That same year, she won a National Magazine Award in 2012 for her reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan on labor abuses and human trafficking on United States military bases and a 2012 George Polk Award for her reporting on the high-risk use of young people as confidential informants in the war on drugs.[18][19][20] Since joining The New Yorker, her investigative reporting has shed light on profiteering in key areas of U.S. life, particularly prisons and jails;[21] immigration detention facilities;[22] disaster recovery programs; and U.S. war zone contracting.[23] She has written in-depth stories on the return of debtors’ prisons, the police use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture, family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border, and more.[10]
In 2016, while still at The New Yorker, Stillman became founding director of the Global Migration Project at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she taught a course on “Gender and Migration” and mentored post-graduate fellows on a range of refugee-related reporting projects.[24] She eventually left the project in 2020.
In 2019, Stillman won another National Magazine Award for her article in The New Yorker on deportation as a death sentence.[25] She won a second Polk Award in 2021 for coverage of migrant workers and climate change.[26] The following year, she reported and voiced “The Essential Workers of the Climate Crisis” for WNYC Studios, which won the national Edward R. Murrow Award for best radio news documentary.[27] In 2024, Stillman won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for her coverage in The New Yorker about troubling injustices in felony murder prosecutions in the U.S.[28]
She runs the Yale Investigative Reporting Lab, a collaborative public-interest journalism project that seeks to deepen coverage of criminal justice, climate change, migration, and mental health.[29] Stillman also teaches narrative non-fiction at Yale University's English Department.[10]
Awards
Along with two George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize, Stillman has received a series of accolades for her work.[30][31][32] In 2012, she received the Hillman Prize.[33] She received a MacArthur fellowship in 2016 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.[34][35]
She is also the recipient of the Overseas Press Club's Joe and Laurie Dine Award for international human-rights reporting and the Michael Kelly Award.[36][37]
Bibliography
Books
- Stillman, Sarah (2000). Soul searching : a girl's guide to finding herself. Illustrated by Susan Gross. Hillsboro, Oregon: Beyond Words.
- — (2001). Soul searching journal : a girl's guide to finding herself. New York: Simon Pulse/Beyond Words.
- — (2012). Soul searching : a girl's guide to finding herself. Illustrated by Susan Gross (Updated ed.). New York: Simon Pulse.
Essays and reporting
- Stillman, Sarah (April 8, 2013). "Up in the air". Goings on About Town. Dept. of Hobbyists. The New Yorker. 89 (8): 24, 26.
- — (May 20, 2024). "The right to hug : children are fighting to visit their parents in county jails". American Chronicles. The New Yorker. 100 (13): 22–26.[a]
———————
- Bibliography notes
- Online version is titled "Do children have a 'right to hug' their parents?".