Dawn Turner is an award-winning journalist and novelist. A former columnist and reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Turner spent a decade and a half writing about race, politics, and people whose stories are often dismissed and ignored. Turner, who served as a 2017 and 2018 juror for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, has written commentary for The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, CBS Sunday Morning News show, NPR’s Morning Edition show, the Chicago Tonight show, and elsewhere. She has covered national presidential conventions, as well as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election and inauguration. Turner has been a regular commentator for several national and international news programs, and has reported from around the world in countries such as Australia, China, France, and Ghana. She spent the 2014–2015 school year as a Nieman Journalism fellow at Harvard University. In 2018, she served as a fellow and journalist-in-residence at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Turner is the author of two novels, Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven and An Eighth of August. In 2018, she established the Dawn M. Turner and Kim D. Turner Endowed Scholarship in Media at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

For forty years, Alex Kotlowitz has been telling stories from the heart of America, deeply intimate tales of struggle and perseverance. His is the author of four books, including his most recent An American Summer which received the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. His other books include The Other Side of the River which received The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Book Prize for Nonfiction -- as well as the national bestseller There Are No Children Here, which the NY Public Library selected as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century. Alex’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and on This American Life. He's been honored in all three mediums, including an Emmy, two Peabodys, two Columbia duPonts, the George Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He’s also the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the Harold Washington Literary Award. Alex is a professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Maria Woltjen.