Author and journalist Alice Driver remembers her first time meeting people from other countries as a child in rural Arkansas – they were all workers at meatpacking facilities. Her book, “Life and Death of The American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company,” which won the $25,000 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize, focuses on the struggles those immigrant workers face today – specifically those employed by Tyson, America’s largest meatpacking company.
In this episode, Alice Driver joins the J School Prizes Department’s Abi Wright and Lisa Cohen to talk about her award-winning book, the impact it’s had on migrant workers and the meat industry, and how young journalists can keep their momentum going if they decide to tackle longform projects of their own. She urges
Read more about “Life and Death of The American Worker,” and Driver’s other books, here.
Do you, or someone you know, have a non-fiction work-in-progress that is currently under a book contract? If so, enter to win the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize - or other Lukas Book Prizes - before the Dec. 4, 2025 deadline. Go to https://journalism.columbia.edu/lukas for more information and to enter.
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Author and journalist Alice Driver remembers her first time meeting people from other countries as a child in rural Arkansas – they were all workers at meatpacking facilities. Her book, “Life and Death of The American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company,” which won the $25,000 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize, focuses on the struggles those immigrant workers face today – specifically those employed by Tyson, America’s largest meatpacking company.
In this episode, Alice Driver joins the J School Prizes Department’s Abi Wright and Lisa Cohen to talk about her award-winning book, the impact it’s had on migrant workers and the meat industry, and how young journalists can keep their momentum going if they decide to tackle longform projects of their own. She urges
Read more about “Life and Death of The American Worker,” and Driver’s other books, here.
Do you, or someone you know, have a non-fiction work-in-progress that is currently under a book contract? If so, enter to win the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize - or other Lukas Book Prizes - before the Dec. 4, 2025 deadline. Go to https://journalism.columbia.edu/lukas for more information and to enter.
“They had told the story of how Tamika died, but not how she lived.”
—Podcast Producer Erika Alexander
“Finding Tamika” is the 2023 duPont-winning Audible series about Tamika Huston, a Black woman who went missing in 2004. The media paid scant attention, and she became a rallying cry for missing Black women and girls. But who was she outside of this tragedy?
Podcast producer Erika Alexander tells us why finding the real Tamika behind the crime statistic is so important, and how journalists need to do a better job of telling these stories.
On Assignment - From the duPont-Columbia Awards
Author and journalist Alice Driver remembers her first time meeting people from other countries as a child in rural Arkansas – they were all workers at meatpacking facilities. Her book, “Life and Death of The American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company,” which won the $25,000 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize, focuses on the struggles those immigrant workers face today – specifically those employed by Tyson, America’s largest meatpacking company.
In this episode, Alice Driver joins the J School Prizes Department’s Abi Wright and Lisa Cohen to talk about her award-winning book, the impact it’s had on migrant workers and the meat industry, and how young journalists can keep their momentum going if they decide to tackle longform projects of their own. She urges
Read more about “Life and Death of The American Worker,” and Driver’s other books, here.
Do you, or someone you know, have a non-fiction work-in-progress that is currently under a book contract? If so, enter to win the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize - or other Lukas Book Prizes - before the Dec. 4, 2025 deadline. Go to https://journalism.columbia.edu/lukas for more information and to enter.