Announcing the 2023 Schwartz Visiting Fellow

Known for her New York Times bestselling book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Bruder specializes in subcultures and the dark corners of the economy. Nomadland builds on her groundbreaking Harper's Magazine cover story, The End of Retirement. Bruder spent months living in a camper van (which she named Halen) documenting itinerant Americans who hit the road, traveling from job to job, carving out a place in a precarious economy. Most of the nomads she met were older Americans whose social security came up short and were underwater on their mortgages. They are invisible casualties of the Great Recession who have taken to the road in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans. The project spanned three years, and Bruder drove more than 15,000 miles from coast to coast and from Mexico to the Canadian border. 

Nomadland was published in 2017 and was a critical success. It won the Discover Award and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage and was also a finalist for both the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award. The Times named it both a Notable Book and an Editors’ Choice, and it has been translated into 24 languages. In 2020, it was adapted into the Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning best picture. 

In addition to writing Nomadland, Bruder authored Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man and co-authored Snowden’s Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance. All three books contain Bruder’s original photography. She has contributed to the New York Times for over a decade and has written cover features for The Atlantic, WIRED, and New York Magazine. She has been a staff reporter at The Oregonian and The New York Observer, and a senior editor at Fortune Small Business. Her subcultures and social-issues work focuses on a range of topics — from the future of women’s health in America to rescuing a race seabird from extinction to workplace surveillance to the psychological price of entrepreneurship. In addition to writing, Bruder has been teaching at Columbia Journalism School since 2008.

“Jessica Bruder is known for really getting to know the people and places she writes about,” says Library Director and Schwartz Visiting Fellow Chair Elizabeth Jacquet. “With Pomfret’s emphasis on teaching empathy and experiential learning, we are excited to welcome her to the Hilltop to share her process and expertise with our students.”

On the Hilltop, Bruder will lecture about the importance of immersive journalism, attend classes, sign books, and participate in a student-led question and answer session on Thursday, January 26, and Friday, January 27, 2023. A community lecture, book signing, and reception will be held on Friday, January 27, at 7:00 p.m., in Hard Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is not required.

Since 1989, world-renowned experts have visited Pomfret School under the auspices of the Schwartz Visiting Fellow Program. This speaker series is the result of the vision and generosity of Michael Schwartz ’66 and Eric Schwartz ’69. Past fellows include animal science professor Temple Gradin; author Bill Bryson; human rights activist Madame Jehan Sadat; historian David McCullough; and journalist, author, and national security analyst Peter Bergen.