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Andrea Elliott

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Andrea Elliott
Born
Washington, D.C., U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
OccupationJournalist
EmployerThe New York Times
Notable workInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
Websiteandrea-elliott.com

Andrea Elliott is an American journalist and a staff writer for The New York Times. She is the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in both Journalism (2007) and Letters (2022). She received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a series of articles on an Egyptian-born imam living in Brooklyn and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, a book about Dasani, a young girl enduring homelessness in New York City.

Biography

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Elliott was born in Washington, D.C. to a Chilean mother and an American father. Growing up, Elliot was close with her older brother Thomas and younger brother Pablo.[1] She studied comparative literature at Occidental College, where she developed an interest in documentary film. In 1995, Elliott worked in Chile and Argentina as a field producer for "La Tierra en que Vivimos," a natural history television program. She then moved to San Francisco to co-direct and write the documentary "It's All Good," exploring the subculture of aggressive inline skaters in Los Angeles and New York City. In 1999, Elliott attended Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, graduating first in her class.[2][3]

Journalism career

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Elliott joined The Miami Herald as a reporter in 2000, covering crime, courts, immigration and Latin American politics. She left The Miami Herald for The New York Times in May 2003. As a metro reporter for The Times, she covered the Bronx and then created her own beat – Islam in a post-9/11 America – writing extensively about the backlash against Muslims after the September 11 attacks, domestic radicalization and militant jihad.[2]

In December 2013, Elliott published "Invisible Child," a 28,000-word, five-part series for the Times on child homelessness in New York City.[4] Elliott expanded the series into a book for Random House as an Emerson Fellow at New America Foundation. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City was published in October 2021. It was selected for the New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2021" list.[5]

Prizes

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In 2007, Elliott received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a series of articles on Sheik Reda Shata, an Egyptian-born imam living in Brooklyn.[6][7][8][9] Journalist Jonathan S. Tobin criticized the award because Elliott's reporting failed to mention that it was a sermon preached by Mohammed Moussa (a previous Imam in this mosque) whom she portrayed in sympathetic detail that inspired one of the congregants to perpetrate the 1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting of a bus of Jewish schoolboys; a hate crime.[10]

Elliott is also the recipient of the George Polk Award, the Scripps Howard Award, the David Aronson Award and prizes by the Overseas Press Club, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and the New York Press Club. Her work has been featured in the collections Best Newspaper Writing and Islam for Journalists: A Primer on Covering Muslim American Communities in America.

In May 2014, Elliott received an honorary doctorate from Niagara University, which cited her “courage, perseverance, and a commitment to fairness for those without a public voice rarely demonstrated among writers today.”

In May 2015, Elliott was awarded Columbia University's Medal for Excellence, awarded to one alumna under 45 every year.[11]

In 2018, Elliott received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete her book Invisible Child.[12]

In 2022, Elliot received a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City.[13]

Published works

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  • (2021) Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-8694-5

References

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  1. ^ Andrea Elliott on “Come Together,” House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining at Joe’s Pub in 2022, retrieved 2023-07-05
  2. ^ a b "Andrea Elliott (Biography)". pulitzer.org. Columbia University. Archived from the original on 23 May 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
  3. ^ "Profile: Andrea Elliott '99". Columbia University. Archived from the original on 2012-12-21.
  4. ^ Elliott, Andrea, "Invisible Child", The New York Times, accessed December 9, 2013.
  5. ^ "The 10 Best Books of 2021". The New York Times. November 30, 2021. Retrieved December 18, 2021.
  6. ^ "2007 Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism". The New York Times. April 16, 2007. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  7. ^ Elliott, Andrea (March 5, 2006). "A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, Reconciling 2 Worlds". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  8. ^ Elliott, Andrea (March 6, 2006). "To Lead the Faithful in a Faith Under Fire". The New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  9. ^ Elliott, Andrea (March 7, 2006). "Tending to Muslim Hearts and Islam's Future". The New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  10. ^ Tobin, Jonathan S. (19 April 2007). "Another Pulitzer Prize Disgrace". The Jewish Exponent.
  11. ^ "Columbia Announces 2015 Honorary Degree Winners". Bwog. 24 April 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-04.
  12. ^ "2018 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grantee: Andrea Elliott". Whiting.org. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  13. ^ "The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in General Nonfiction". pulitzer.org. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
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