A Compelling Article About One Family’s Grief by APB Speaker Jennifer Senior Garners Huge Engagement
14 Oct 2021
An article by APB speaker Jennifer Senior in The Atlantic magazine has gone viral. “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind” was published in the September issue. It tells the story of a victim of Sept. 11 and his family’s search for meaning in the two decades since the day the towers fell. Senior’s brother lived with McIlvaine at the time of the attack. The story is getting more engagement than any piece in the magazine since 2002.
The article has also received praise from many familiar names. “This long-read by @JenSeniorNY stayed with me,” tweeted filmmaker Ava DuVernay. “It’s about the ripples that each of our lives makes on other lives. In this case, the focus is a bright young man lost on 9/11 and the waves of pain and misunderstanding, but also purpose for those left behind.”
“Jennifer Senior has written an extraordinarily wrenching exploration of grief, trauma and the way they ripple through the decades,” says author John Green. “One of the most moving and brilliantly constructed works of nonfiction I've ever read.”
Senior is a staff writer for The Atlantic. She is also the author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. The Christian Science Monitor called it "an important book, much the way The Feminine Mystique was." In his rave review for the New York Times, Andrew Solomon said it "inspired me to think differently about being a parent." The book spent eight weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and has been translated into 12 languages. Slate named it one of the Top 10 Books of 2014.
Senior has won many journalism prizes, including a GLAAD award, the Erikson Prize in Mental Health Media and two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York. Her work has been anthologized four times in The Best American Political Writing, and her long-form feature for the New York Times Sunday Review, “Happiness Won’t Save You,” has just been selected for the 2021 edition of Best American Science Writing.