2019 Year in Review

This year, we received nearly 400 applications and awarded 15 2020 New America National Fellowships. The competitive selection process is reflected in the immense talent of the 15 National Fellows who earned a spot in this class. Meet the Class of 2020 and learn more about the applicant pool by reading our Class of 2020 “Who Applied?" report.

This year, New America’s National Fellows published 10 books on fascinating topics ranging from climate change, to the conflict in Northern Ireland, to global migration. We are especially excited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Fellows Program, having supported more than 200 National Fellows who have published more than 100 books! As always, our National Fellows are bringing challenging issues to the forefront of public discourse.

Eliza Griswold won the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction for her book Amity and Prosperity. Five books by New America fellows were on the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2019” list, including Azadeh Moaveni’s Guest House for Young Widows, David Wallace Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth, Christopher Leonard's Kochland, George Packer's Our Man, and Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing.

David Wallace-Wells, Patrick Radden Keefe, and Christopher Leonard all held multiple weeks on the New York Times bestseller list for their books.

Jason DeParle's A Good Provider is One Who Leaves, Christopher Leonard's Kochland, and Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing were listed as the best social science books of 2019 by the Library Journal. Our Man, by George Packer, was named one of the 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2019 by the Washington Post.

Azadeh Moaveni's Guest House for Young Widows and Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing were on the Guardian's best books of 2019 list. Say Nothing won the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing. It was also named one of the 10 best books of 2019 by the New York Times, and one of the best nonfiction books of the decade by Entertainment Weekly.

The 2019 NPR Book Concierge recommended eight Fellows' books: A Good Provider is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, Our Man by George Packer, Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni, Kochland by Christopher Leonard, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, The Optimist’s Telescope by Bina Venkataraman, and Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts.

The following nine 2019 books were reviewed by the New York Times: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, Our Man by George Packer, Guest House for Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni, Kochland by Christopher Leonard, A Good Provider is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle, The Optimist’s Telescope by Bina Venkataraman, Self-Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams, and Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Reniquia Allen also published an op-ed in the Times based on work for her book, It Was All a Dream.

In addition to the books, we are honored to have supported a SHOWTIME TV series adaptation of The Loudest Voice in the Room based on the book by Gabriel Sherman, Border South, a film by Raúl O. Paz Pastrana about immigrant resilience amidst a violent and negligent global migration system, and Sergio, an upcoming Netflix original movie by Greg Barker, based on his 2009 award-winning film of the same name. The film will be one of the 118 feature films to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. Assia Boundaoui's 2018 film, The Feeling of Being Watched aired on POV Documentaries on PBS this year.

Along with captivating, award-winning books and films, our fellows also produced a variety of longform articles, interactive features, and presentations.

• Clint Smith, Trymaine Lee, and Reginald Dwayne Betts' work appeared in the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project Issue led by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
• Jessica Bruder wrote a cover story for WIRED about the Somali warehouse workers who are taking on Amazon.
• Rachel Aviv wrote a story for the New Yorker about the challenge of going off psychiatric drugs.
• Jill Filipovic wrote a cover story for Politico about Honduras, domestic violence, and the layered factors driving Honduran women to the southern U.S. border.
• George Packer wrote a cover story for the Atlantic about Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century.

• Katie Engelhart reported and produced Abortion Back-Up Plan, an NBC Left Field longform segment about the alternatives low-income American women turn to when they can’t afford clinic abortions.
• Vann R. Newkirk II wrote a cover story chronicling the history of the 1 million black families in the Mississippi Delta whose land was stolen for the Atlantic.
• Matthew Shaer wrote a cover story for the New York Times Magazine about brain reanimation and its scientific and ethical implications.

• Bina Venkataraman gave a TED Talk about how to more optimistically imagine and realize the future of our lives, businesses, and communities, based on her book The Optimist’s Telescope.
• Suzy Hansen wrote a story on internet censorship in Turkey for the New York Times Magazine special Tech & Design Issue.

• Reginald Dwayne Betts won the 2019 National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for his New York Times Magazine article "Get Out."
• Suki Kim was awarded a 2019 Berlin Prize Fellowship which she will spend to work on The Portrait of Complicity, an investigative nonfiction book on war and its transgenerational consequences.
• Masha Gessen received the 2019 Lambda Literary Visionary Award for her work on the global threat of totalitarianism.
• Marcia Chatelain won a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, awarded for high-caliber scholarship in the social sciences and humanities.
• Sarah Jackson accepted a Presidential Associate Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications.
• Matthieu Aikins was named the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations for this year.
• Patricia Evangelista won a Global Shining Light award for her investigative work on the drug wars in the Philippines.
• Rania Abouzeid won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for best nonfiction book on international affairs for her book No Turning Back: Life, Loss and Hope in Wartime Syria.
• Azadeh Moaveni’s book, Guest House for Young Widows, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction.