Talk by Author and Journalist Sarah Smarsh

Anyone who wishes to understand our deep national divisions must understand the complex interactions of race, class and gender. Few writers can provide that understanding – through careful research and the lived experience of the white working poor – like Sarah Smarsh. On Thursday, Nov. 12, Smarsh will deliver a livestream talk open to the UT community, available via registration (to be made available as the event approaches) at the Moody College Honors Program website.

Smarsh has reported on socioeconomic class for The Guardian, the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s and many other publications. She is a regular political commentator in national media and has spoken internationally on poverty, rural issues, and cultural divides. She was recently a Fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. In 2019, she released a podcast entitled The Homecomers, which focuses on how a national blind spot toward rural and working-class America is driving misleading headlines, broken politics, and dangerous fissures in our social fabric. Due out in October, her new book, “She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs,” is an “affectionate and astute cultural study,” according to Publisher’s Weekly, “with luminescent prose and briskly tempered storytelling.” The book follows the success of “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

The event is FREE and open to the public. REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED. The event is sponsored by The Michener Center for Writers, the Moody College Honors Program, the Plan II Honors Program, the Department of American Studies and the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies.