Wesley Lowery: On How to Dive Into a Journalism Project

Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and on-air correspondent. He currently works as a contributing editor at The Marshall Project and a Journalist-in-Residence at the CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

In nearly a decade as a national correspondent, Lowery has specialized in issues of race, justice, and law enforcement. He led the Washington Post team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 for the creation and analysis of a real-time database to track fatal police shootings in the United States.

His project, “Murder with Impunity,” an unprecedented look at unsolved homicides in major American cities, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. His first book, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, was a New York Times bestseller and awarded the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose by the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

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Wesley Lowery

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In this post, Wesley shares what inspired his most recent book, how long it took to write it, and how he starts each of his projects.

Name: Wesley Lowery
Literary agent: Anthony Mattero (CAA)
Book title: American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress
Publisher: Mariner Books/HarperCollins
Release date: June 27, 2023
Genre/category: Nonfiction, Race and Justice, Anti-racism, History, Social Justice
Previous titles: They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement
Elevator pitch for the book: We’re living in a time of increased racialized violence and a resurgent white supremacist movement. One of America’s leading journalists probes our nation’s past and present to try to figure out why.

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What prompted you to write this book?

As the Obama administration gave way to the Trump Era, the headlines were full of stories of white racialized violence—in Charleston, in Charlottesville, in Pittsburgh, in El Paso, and in Buffalo. After having spent years covering issues of race and justice, it felt like there was no more important task to undertake than to chronicle and contextualize the violence of our era, and the lives that were lost.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I initially sold this book in 2018, and the idea expanded, contracted, and clarified in the years that followed. As a reporter, I start each of my projects with a question, and then fill my notebook with stories, research, and insights that may help provide the answers. And so, over the course answering the question, the idea evolves and changes.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers walk away from this book with a historically based understanding of the moment we currently occupy and are better prepared to call white racialized violence by its name, hold accountable powerful people who traffic in dangerous rhetoric, and strive to build a more equal and equitable world.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write the sentence. Walk away for a week. Then write it again.

While there’s no shortage of writing advice, it’s often scattered around—a piece of advice here, words of wisdom there. And in the moments when you most need writing advice, what you find might not resonate with you or speak to the issue you’re dealing with. In A Year of Writing Advice, the editors of Writer’s Digest have gathered thoughts, musings, and yes, advice from 365 authors in dozens of genres to help you on your writing journey.

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