Anna Clark is a ProPublica journalist who lives in Detroit. She is the author of The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy, which won the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Anna’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Elle, the New Republic, Politico, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Boston Review, Next City, and other publications. She edited A Detroit Anthology, a Michigan Notable Book.

She is a nonfiction faculty member in Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. Anna was a Fulbright fellow in creative writing in Kenya and a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. She has been a longtime leader of writing and improv theater workshops in prisons, detention centers, high schools, libraries, and beyond.

She believes in curiosity, uncertainty, and hard work as the backbone of all good storytelling, and hopes that in this lifelong practice, she will bring more truth and empathy into the world, and into her own heart.

The Poisoned City:

Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy

Buy the Book

“An exceptional work of journalism. … Clark delivers a thorough account of a still-evolving public health crisis, one with an unmistakable racial subtext. … Her book is a deeply reported account of catastrophic mismanagement. But it’s also a celebration of civic engagement, a tribute to those who are fighting back against governmental malpractice.”
―San Francisco Chronicle

★★★★ out of four: “It’s hard to overstate how important Anna Clark’s new book The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy is … [A] taut, riveting and comprehensive account … Clark is meticulous in untangling the welter of misstatements, cover-ups and dismissals of the problem’s severity by officials convinced that staunching the red ink hemorrhaging the crippled economies of Flint and Michigan somehow was more important than children afflicted by lead poisoning.”
―USA Today

“Incisive and informed… Clark combines a staggering amount of research and several intimate story lines to reveal how the Michigan city was poisoned by its leaders and then largely abandoned to its fate by state officials…. Clark takes no prisoners, naming all the names and presenting the confirming research. ‘Neglect,’ she warns, ‘is not a passive force in American cities, but an aggressive one.’ The Poisoned City is an environmental tent revival for people who continue to suffer and a call to arms for everyone who values professional local journalism. Amen, Anna Clark, Amen.”
―Booklist (starred review)

“[A] complex, exquisitely detailed account … A potent cautionary tale of urban neglect and indifference. Infuriated readers will be heartened by the determined efforts of protesters and investigative reporters.”
―Kirkus (starred review)

“Searing scrutiny… Riveting… A sobering read through all the spin and cover ups… A cornucopia of history and responsibly researched details… I have yet to encounter a more thorough, accurate or readable account of the poisoning of Flint’s municipal water supply than The Poisoned City. This is an important book, for Flint, for all American cities, and for our nation.”
―East Village Magazine (Flint, Michigan)

“An arresting and copiously documented saga of moneyed corruption… A bracing, closely reported chronicle… Clark ably pieces together the grotesque convergence of forces that transformed Flint into a byword of failed oversight and artificially induced hazard. And she rightly notes that the water crisis, as sudden and unexpected as it might have seemed, was the culmination of more than a generation’s worth of systemic neglect and cynical austerity-minded pillaging from on high.”
―Bookforum