Eliza Griswold (born February 9, 1973) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and poet. Griswold is currently a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. She is the author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2019, and which was a 2018 New York Times Notable Book and a Times Critics' Pick.[1][2] Griswold was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[3] She is a former Nieman Fellow and a current Berggruen Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.

Eliza Griswold
Griswold at the 2024 National Book Awards finalist reading
Born (1973-02-09) February 9, 1973 (age 51)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materPrinceton University
Occupation(s)Journalist, Poet
FatherFrank Griswold

Professional life

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Eliza Griswold graduated from Princeton University in 1995[4] and studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to post-secondary education, she graduated from St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire.

Griswold has written extensively on the "war on terror".[5] She won the first Robert I. Friedman Prize in Investigative Journalism in 2004, for "In the Hiding Zone", about Pakistan's Waziristan Agency. She worked with later murdered Pakistani journalist Hayatullah Khan, because, as she said, “he followed the story, no matter the personal cost.”[6]

Griswold published Wideawake Field, a book of poetry, on May 17, 2007.[7][8][9] A second book, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, is a travelogue about the regions of the world along the line of latitude where Christianity and Islam clash.[10] In 2011 Griswold was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for The Tenth Parallel.[11] She was also a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.[12]

In 2011 in The New York Times Magazine, Griswold published an investigative report, "The Fracturing of Pennsylvania", which investigated the environmentally-questionable practices of fracking companies such as Range Resources, based in Texas. In 2015 for The New York Times Magazine, she wrote about the demise of Christianity in the Mideast.[13]

Griswold was a 2014 Ferris Professor at Princeton University and currently teaches at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University as a Distinguished Writer in Residence.[14]

In 2015, Griswold's translation from the Pashto of I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.[15]

Griswold won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America.[16]

In 2020, Griswold published her second book of poetry, If Men, Then, which appeared in The New Yorker and Granta, was profiled by the Poetry Foundation, was listed as New and Noteworthy by The New York Times and was one of Vogue's most anticipated books of 2020.[17]

In 2024, Griswold's next book, A Circle of Hope: Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.[18] It was longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.[19]

Family

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Eliza Griswold is the daughter of Phoebe and Frank Griswold, the 25th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.[20] She is married to journalist and academic Steve Coll.[21] Steve Coll is former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, which hosts the Pulitzer Prizes and a Pulitzer board member since 2012. She was previously married to Christopher Allen.[22]

Bibliography

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Books

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  • Griswold, Eliza (1997). A night full of low stars. Johns Hopkins University.
  • — (2007). Wideawake field : poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 17 August 2010. ISBN 978-1-4299-7966-5.
  • I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan. Macmillan. 1 April 2014. ISBN 978-0374191870.
  • Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018. ISBN 9780374103118.
  • If Men, Then. Farrar, Strous and Giroux. 2020. ISBN 9780374280772
  • Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power and Justice in an American Church. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2024. ISBN 9780374601683.

Essays and reporting

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Notes

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  1. ^ "Eliza Griswold". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  2. ^ "The Ridenhour Prizes - Fostering the spirit of courage and truth". www.ridenhour.org. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  3. ^ "Career Planning for CMES AM Students". Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University. 2006–2007. Archived from the original on 2010-01-09. Retrieved 2007-11-26.
  4. ^ "Princeton Alumni Weekly". www.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2023-11-02.
  5. ^ Amy Crawford (December 1, 2006). "An interview with Eliza Griswold, author of "Waging Peace in the Philippines"". Smithsonian magazine. Archived from the original on September 27, 2009. Retrieved 2007-11-26.
  6. ^ Dietz, Bob (September 20, 2006). "The Last Story: Hayatullah Khan". Committee to Protect Journalists. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  7. ^ Wideawake Field. Macmillan.
  8. ^ Eliza Griswold (May 17, 2007). Wideawake Field. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-29930-9.
  9. ^ Jessica Winter. "It's Not Enough to Feel This". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2007-11-23.
  10. ^ Robinson, Linda (2010-08-19). "Book Review - The Tenth Parallel - By Eliza Griswold". The New York Times.
  11. ^ "Columbia, Nieman Foundation announce winners of the 2011 Lukas Prize Project". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. Archived from the original on 10 July 2011. Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  12. ^ "Eliza Grizwold" Archived 2013-09-21 at the Wayback Machine. Guggenheim Foundation.
  13. ^ Griswold, Eliza (22 July 2015). "Is this the end of christianity in the middle east". The New York Times.
  14. ^ "Eliza Griswold". NYU Journalism. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  15. ^ "Announcing the 2015 PEN Literary Award Winners". 8 May 2015.
  16. ^ "Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, by Eliza Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) - The Pulitzer Prizes". 19 April 2019.
  17. ^ Specter, Emma (17 December 2019). "The 41 Most Anticipated Books of 2020". Vogue. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  18. ^ French, David (5 August 2024). "The Church Preached Love and Tolerance. Then Racial Politics Tore It Apart". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 September 2024.
  19. ^ "The 2024 National Book Awards Longlist". The New Yorker. 12 September 2024. Retrieved 13 September 2024.
  20. ^ Fox, Neva Rae (January 12, 2025), "BOOKS & CULTURE: A Compassionate Look at a Church's Collapse", The Living Church, 268 (1): 37, Her father was the 25th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, the late Frank T. Griswold.
  21. ^ "Steve Coll". Columbia Journalism School. Columbia University. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  22. ^ "WEDDINGS;Eliza Griswold, Christopher Allen". The New York Times. 1996-06-09.
  23. ^ Online version is titled "The future of coal country".
  24. ^ Online version is titled "The new front line of the anti-abortion movement".
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