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On America

DW Gibson on 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall with Luis Alberto Urrea

Free

Online Event

Wednesday, 7:30 pm EDT July 22, 2020

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Journalist DW Gibson will discuss his book 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall, which takes us to the ecosystem surrounding the fourteen completed miles of Trump’s border wall in San Diego County, with writer Luis Alberto Urrea.

In 2017, when the Department of Homeland Security announced an open call for prototypes for Trump’s border wall, DW Gibson, an award-winning journalist and Southern California native, began visiting the construction site and watching as the samples were erected. Gibson spent those two years closely observing the work and interviewing local residents to understand how it was impacting them.

“Page-turning, often tense…mind-expanding…Gibson portrays the varied humanity on both sides with journalistic integrity and readable prose.” —Kirkus Reviews


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In Conversation

  • DW Gibson (c) Tasha Garcia Gibson

    DW Gibson

    DW Gibson

    DW Gibson is the author of the award-winning book The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century and Not Working: People Talk About Losing a Job and Finding Their Way in Today’s Changing Economy. He shared a National Magazine Award for his work on an oral history of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the Village Voice, and the Caravan. Gibson is a contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered” and a frequent guest host for WNYC programming. He is the author of 14 Miles. Find out more and listen to clips of DW on the radio at DWGibson.net

  • joe-mazza-brave-lux-chicago-ne-3281786820-o-682x1024_0_o - Carla Cain-Walther

    Luis Alberto Urrea

    Luis Alberto Urrea

    A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonfiction The Devil’s Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea is also the bestselling author of the novels The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, as well as the story collection The Water Museum, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.

    He has won the Lannan Literary Award, an Edgar Award, and a 2017 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among many other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, he lives outside of Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago.