This summer, nthspace welcomes Jodie Adams Kirshner to our Torino residency program. A journalist, lawyer and research professor at NYU, Jodie's narrative nonfiction work weaves individuals' stories, bringing humanity and immediacy to economic system failures and the urgent need to implement improvements tailored to individuals' actual needs.

Jodie's previous book Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises (St. Martin’s, 2019) provides a deeply human-centered account of Detroit’s bankruptcy ordeal and its aftermath told through the lives of seven primarily working-poor Detroiters. It was one of five finalists for the J. Anthony Lukas Award, won the Tillie Olsen Award, was designated a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and attracted a prestigious research grant from the Kresge Foundation.

Jodie's next book, to be completed during the residency, and tentatively titled After A Generation of Dreams, follows American low-income racial minority families as they encounter obstacles that prevent education from functioning as a true pathway to economic mobility and sustained lifetime earnings, in order to uncover new inroads for reform. Through accounts gleaned through years of in-depth conversations about the stories people learn from others and tell each other, it promises to expose the human complexity involved in growing race- and income-based educational disparities and the ramifications those disparities hold for individuals and cities in the USA. The research and writing has received support from the ECMC, Kresge, and Lumina Foundations, and some of the protagonists' initial experiences have been captured in a series of feature articles Jodie has published in the Washington Monthly.

Jodie has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and graduate degrees in both law and journalism from Columbia University. She studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University and has spent time as a law professor at Cambridge University, UK, and as a technical advisor to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. She is currently a research professor at the Marron Institute at NYU.

"When we recognize some of ourselves in another’s story, that provides an impetus for change."

jodieadamskirshner.com