April 1, 2019
WHAT: Bestselling author and journalist Sarah Smarsh will meet with members of the
media prior to her talk at MCLA’s Spring Public Policy Lecture.
WHEN: Thursday, April 4, 4:30 p.m.
WHERE: MCLA’s Feigenbaum Center for Science and Innovation, Room 128
Smarsh’s lecture, “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest
Country on Earth,” (also the title of her bestselling book) takes place at 7 p.m.
in the MCLA Church Street Center’s Eleanor Furst Roberts Auditorium. The lecture is
free and open to the public. Smarsh is a bestselling author, author, educator, speaker,
and journalist who focuses on socioeconomic class and rural America.
Smarsh’s reportage and commentary have been published by The Guardian, The New York
Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and many other publications. Her essays on class
and poverty, “Poor Teeth” and “The First Person on Mars,” were both listed as notables
in Best American Essays. Sarah recently published a four-part piece in No Depression
about Dolly Parton and the working-class feminism found in country music. She is a
regular commentator in national media and has spoken on poverty, politics, rural issues,
cultural divides and the future of news. She was recently a Fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein
Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and will soon launch a much-anticipated
podcast about class and rural America.
