DanBarry_test

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Sept 13, 2012 | 7PM "Hope Diamond" - Dan Barry speaks at Boston College Each summer, Boston College asks its incoming freshmen to read a book whose theme can provide a starting point for reflection and conversation that will later be illuminated through an address by the author at the annual First Year Convocation in September. The book for this year’s class is Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry.

Oct 23, 2012 | 7PM 2012 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony Award winners and runners-up will be honored at the 2012 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, October 23, 2012, at CUNY Graduate Center’s Proshansky Auditorium in New York City. Details are forthcoming for this event. Stay tuned.

Recent Work

For Patsy Cline’s Hometown, an Embrace That Took Decades Dec. 24, 2012 - A modest tin-roof house stands as a monument to a dropout turned country singer who gained more recognition from Winchester, Va., after her death at 30 than during her life. Full Story

With the Why Elusive, Two Boys, Two Burials Dec. 18, 2012 - The people of Newtown buried two boys on Monday afternoon, in the first of the many funerals to follow last week's massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. The boys were both 6 years old. Full Story

Divining the Weather, With Methods Old and New Dec 10, 2012 - Bill O'Toole works as the seventh prognosticator of J. Gruber's Hagerstown Town and Country Almanack, a line of work that began in 1797 with a star-savvy blacksmith. Full Story

Storm-Tossed Memories Nov 18, 2012 - Hurricane Sandy transformed cherished snapshots into an open-air exhibition of people's lives. Full Story

Back When a Chocolate Puck Tasted, Guiltily, Like America Nov 17, 2012 - Consumers already knew that not everything is good for you, and this was never truer than with a Twinkie, a Sno Ball, or a Ring Ding — the Ding Dong equivalent in the Northeast. Full Story

In a Small Ohio City, an Almost Sacred Day of Civic Purpose Nov 7, 2012 - The jaded might contend that in a presidential election, one vote among tens of millions has no meaning. In Elyria, Ohio, voting is simply what you do. Full Story

Hoops Springs Eternal Nov 5, 2012 - It's basketball season again. The hoop beckons. Do you hearken to its call? Full Story

Evoking 18th-Century Drama, a Tragedy on the Bounty Nov 4, 2012 - A vessel of timber and lore was hammered by the hurricane, and the captain has not been found. Full Story

With a New Menu and a Makeover, a Promise to Keep Going Oct. 18, 2012 - One constant in a struggling city like Elyria, Ohio, is the shared determination to make it through this day and into the next. Full Story

In the Hard Fall of a Favorite Son, a Reminder of a City's Scars Oct. 17, 2012 - Ike Maxwell walks the streets of Elyria, Ohio, as if determined to break through life's defensive line. Often he is shouting. But what is he trying to say? Full Story

After a Childhood Pouring Refills, Reaching Beyond the Past Oct. 16, 2012 - Bridgette Harvan, 21, has worked at her grandmother's diner since she was 9. But as the breakfast regulars reminisce of better days in Elyria, Ohio, she dreams of a brighter future in a rejuvenated town.. Full Story

New Mayor, Big To-Do List Oct. 15, 2012 - Mayor Holly Brinda, a fourth-generation resident of Elyria, Ohio, remains hopeful despite cutbacks that have cost city jobs and reduced city services. Full Story

At the Corner of Hope and Worry Oct. 14, 2012 - A small cafe, in the small city of Elyria, Ohio, is being tested by a tough economy. It is the kind of place where Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each hope that his promise of a restored American dream will resonate. Full Story

Meditating on the gumbo of human existence in Irish Bayou, LA.
Photo by Nicole Bengiveno.

ABOUT

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Dan Barry writes the This Land column for The New York Times, a feature that he inaugurated in January of 2007. In traveling to all 50 states, he has, among other experiences, witnessed an execution in Tennessee, visited a Yup’ik village in western Alaska, and interviewed Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner in The Wizard of Oz, in Jacksonville, Fl. Once, while on a boat to report about the Asian carp that leap by the thousands from the Illinois River, he was struck by one of the fishy projectiles; he has since recovered, though flashbacks remain a problem.

Barry joined the Times in September 1995. Since then he has held several positions at the Times, including Long Island bureau chief (where he oversaw a staff of two, including himself), City Hall bureau chief, and, from June 2003 until November 2006, the About New York columnist. He was a major contributor to the newspaper’s coverage of the Sept. 11 catastrophe and its aftermath, as well as its coverage of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1958, he grew up in Deer Park – Exit 51 on the Long Island Expressway. His mother, Noreen, was from County Galway, Ireland; she could spin a tragicomic tale of Homeric proportion out of a trip to ShopRite for a quart of milk. His father, Gene, was from Depression-era New York City; he could find evidence of a conspiracy against working people out of trip to ShopRite for a quart of milk.

Barry graduated from St. Bonaventure University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, then dug ditches and worked in Long Island delicatessens before earning a master’s degree in journalism from New York University -- after which he dug some more ditches. He went on to work at the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn., where he covered one too many zoning board meetings, and the Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, where protesters once burned copies of one of his stories outside the newspaper’s building.

Barry has won several journalism honors. In 1992, he and two other Providence Journal reporters won a George Polk Award for an investigation into the causes of a state banking crisis. In 1994, he and the other members of the Journal’s investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about Rhode Island’s court system. His other honors include the 2003 American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for deadline reporting, for his coverage of the first anniversary of Sept. 11, and the 2005 Mike Berger Award, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which honors in-depth human interest reporting. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2006, for his slice-of-life reports from hurricane-battered New Orleans and from New York, and in 2010, for his This Land articles.

In addition, in 2001 he received a fifth-place award for feature writing from a national bowling organization; the certificate misspelled his name.

Barry has written three books: Pull Me Up: A Memoir, published in May 2004; City Lights: Stories About New York, a collection of his About New York columns, published in November 2007; and Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game, published in April 2011.