Anna Clark is a writer who lives in Detroit. She is a reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism with moral force. 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. It was also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Book Journalism. The Poisoned City was named one of the year’s best books by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Public Library, Audible, and others.

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, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and other publications. She received the Excellence in Environmental Journalism award from the Great Lakes Environmental Law Council, and her writing was a “notable” pick in Best American Sports Writing 2012.

Anna also edited A Detroit Anthology, which, like The Poisoned City, was named a Michigan Notable Book. She also wrote a small book on the literary culture of the Third Coast called Michigan Literary Luminaries: From Elmore Leonard to Robert Hayden.

Anna co-curated the Motor Signal Reading Series in Detroit’s Eastern Market for many years, which jolted the literary reading out of its traditional form. She has been a longtime leader of creative writing and improv theater workshops in prisons, detention centers, high schools, libraries, soup kitchens, and well beyond.

She graduated from the University of Michigan’s Residential College with highest honors, double majoring in art history and creative writing & literature, and minoring in crime & justice. She also graduated from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. She was a Fulbright fellow in creative writing in Kenya, and a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan.

Anna grew up in St. Joseph, Michigan, a little town on Lake Michigan. (She wrote about it here.) For a few years, Anna lived and worked in Boston in an intentional community — kind of like an urban commune — called Haley House. For more than fifty years, the live-in community at Haley House has been grounded in the purposeful work of simplicity, creative nonviolence, self-governance, community, and social justice, especially as it relates to poverty and economic inequality. There is also a lot of laughter and dancing.

Sometimes, Anna likes to do things that involve neither writing nor reading nor asking people questions. These things include running, hiking, bike-riding, cheering for Detroit and University of Michigan sports, going to see fun shows (comedy, movies, theater, music), playing games with her nieces and nephews (or anyone, really), and generally just wandering around.