Book the Authors of "Tightrope" for Speaking, Events and Appearances | APB Speakers
14 Jan 2020
APB speakers Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn are not only husband and wife, but also Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, human rights advocates and best-selling authors together. This super-couple has published their highly anticipated new book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. To kick off the release, they adapted an essay from the book for The New York Times.
Nick and Sheryl are known for their international reporting, but after a particularly sobering visit to Nick’s hometown in rural Oregon, the investigative duo turned their focus domestically, examining the crisis of the working class here in the United States. Their Times feature, called “Who Killed the Knapp Family?”, explores the catalyst for the book that serves as a microcosm of the greater issue at stake. The authors question how it is possible that four of the five children of the Knapp family, Nick’s childhood friends and bus-mates, died young, preventable deaths? This serves as a window into the epidemic of depression, unemployment, poverty and addiction that is plaguing the working class across America – and the government's failure to address it.
Tightrope was a deeply personal project for Nick and Sheryl; they say, “Our own reporting in the past focused on foreigners, affording us an emotional distance, while this time we spoke with old friends and had no armor. It has been wrenching to see them struggle.” The first married couple ever to win a Pulitzer, this duo is passionate about telling the stories that need to be told, no matter how difficult or painful to research. Sharing hard truths with audiences, they make compelling cases for change.