2018 Winner: Matthew Desmond
With great excitement, the Stowe Center announces Matthew Desmond as our 2018 Stowe Prize winner, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown, 2018).
Matthew Desmond is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography.
Desmond is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. A Contributing Writer for the New York Times Magazine, Desmond was listed in 2016 among the Politico 50, as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.” Desmond is also the author of the award-winning book On the Fireline, the coauthor of two books on race, and the editor of a collection of studies on severe deprivation in America.
The Stowe Prize recognizes the author of a distinguished book of general adult fiction or nonfiction whose written work illuminates a critical social issue in the tradition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The winning book applies informed inquiry, is accessible and engaging to a wide audience, and promotes empathy and understanding. In making this award, the Stowe Center recognizes the value of diversity to strengthen our communities.
Dr. Cheryl Greenberg
Dr. Joan Hedrick
Dr. Patricia Hill
Jared Jeter
Dr. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar
Robert Roggeveen
Dr. Barbara Sicherman
Mary Ellen White
LEGACY PRESENTING SPONSOR
“After reading Evicted, you’ll realize you cannot have a serious conversation about poverty without talking about housing. . . . The book is that good, and it’s that unignorable.”
