0 Jennifer Miller '08 publishes debut novel, "The Year of the Gadfly"

     

May 15, 2012

 

Jennifer Miller ’08 turned her time at Columbia Journalism School into her debut novel, “The Year of the Gadfly,” published recently by Houghton Mifflin.

The book features Iris Dupont, an aspiring teenage journalist who looks to the ghost of Edward R. Murrow for guidance. Dupont's story intersects with that of Jonah Kaplan, a failed microbiologist-turned-biology-teacher, as both work to uncover a secret society in their remote New England town. Iris’ dogged pursuit of the truth—and her education about the personal cost of such idealism—were inspired by Miller’s time at the J-School: by lessons learned in classes, from faculty, and from classmates.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius writes, “It's hard to resist any novel whose young journalist heroine hallucinates that she’s in conversation with Edward R. Murrow. But Jennifer Miller has also written a book with the feel of real life—part science experiment, part mystery, part a coming-of-age narrative sorting out the truth about one’s friends and enemies.”

Miller is also the author of “Inheriting The Holy Land,” published by Ballantine in 2005. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Fast Company, Smithsonian.com, Salon.com, Guernica.com, the Columbia Journalism Review, The Millions and the Daily Beast. In addition to her degree in journalism, Miller has an MFA in Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. She is a native of Washington, DC and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. @PropJen

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0 Naomi Zeveloff, M.A. ’11, publishes thesis in Guernica magazine

     

August 16, 2012

Naomi Zeveloff, M.A. ’11 published her master’s thesis about Ramallah with Guernica magazine this week, in a feature titled “The Five-Star Occupation.”

In the piece, Zeveloff looks into the Palestinian city’s recent economic boom, profiling inhabitants and the city itself—how it stands today, and the historical and political conditions that shaped it.

“What is different about today’s rush of economic activity—which began around 2008 and has intensified since, and which I witnessed first hand when I visited a year and a half ago—is that it is occurring independently of any political agreement with Israel for Palestinian independence. Ramallah is a cosmopolitan city, in an entity without borders or currency, a burgeoning metropolis adrift in the murkiest of political waters,” she writes.

A longer version of Zeveloff’s piece won best thesis prize for M.A. candidates when she graduated, with an M.A. concentration in politics, from the Journalism School in 2011. She is now deputy culture editor at The Forward, and her work has appeared in alternative newsweeklies in Colorado Springs, Denver, Dallas and Salt Lake City and on Salon.com. She has received an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies award for immigration reporting, and three Colorado Society of Professional Journalists awards for excellence in reporting.

In October, Zeveloff wrote a piece about Jewish farm settlement Clarion for The Forward that was translated into Hebrew and Yiddish, and published in Ha’aretz and the Yiddish Forward respectively. 

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