People Want to Be Heard

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer at The New Yorker and one of the most decorated investigative reporters of her generation. She has won several National Magazine Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Her work draws attention to the men and women forced to do the bidding of the American security state—the so-called “third-country nationals” who were tricked into working on military bases in Iraq, the addicts coerced into serving as police informants, and the victims of civil-asset forfeiture.Our conversation, the third episode of “The Art of the Interview,” touched on every stage of Stillman’s career, from her days as a student journalist to her current directorship of Yale’s Investigative Reporting Lab, where she helps students cultivate the relentlessness and compassion that make her a uniquely effective reporter.Merve Emre: Most of the people in this room are college students who might look to you as an example of how a journalist can make a career. Could you tell us about how you got to where you are today?Sarah Stillman: I got my reporting start when I was at the Yale gym my senior year, trying to figure out what I was going to do my senior thesis about. T...