Washtenaw Reads 2017 Author Event: Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer, Authors of "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America"

When

Tuesday February 7, 2017: 7:00pm to 8:30pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Rackham Auditorium 915 E. Washington St. Ann Arbor

For Whom

Grade 9 - Adult

Description

For months hundreds of community members throughout Washtenaw County have been reading and discussing the award-winning book $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer, which was selected for Washtenaw Reads in September by a panel of community judges.

Join us for an unforgettable evening as both authors discuss the themes of this unforgettable book.

After two decades of groundbreaking research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn’t seen before — households surviving on virtually no income, a level of destitution so deep as to be unthought-of in the world’s most advanced capitalist economy. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on surveys of the incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to one and a half million American households, including about three million children.

The result of their investigative teamwork is this book, which received much critical acclaim. "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America" won the prestigious Hillman Prize for Book Journalism by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, was short-listed for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation and was named a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.

Kathryn J. Edin, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, is the coauthor of "Promises I Can’t Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage" and "Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work." H. Luke Shaefer, Ph.D. is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, where he studies poverty and social welfare policy in the United States.. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and received the 2013 Early Career Achievement Award, given by the Society for Social Work and Research.

The public program will occur from 7:00 to 8:30 pm. Doors will open at 6 pm to offer the opportunity to for the public to connect with local community agencies including Alpha House, Catholic Social Services, Food Gatherers, Ground Cover, Offender Success, Ozone House, Safe House, SOS Community Service, United Way, Washtenaw County Sheriff, and Washtenaw Health Plan staffing information tables in the lobby. Books will be for sale courtesy of Barnes & Noble and a book signing will occur in the lobby immediately following the event.