Jake Halpern

{{Short description |American writer and commentator (born 1975)}}

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Jake Halpern (born 1975) is an American writer, commentator, and podcast producer.

Life and career

He was born in Buffalo, New York, where he attended City Honors School. Halpern later attended Yale University, where he received an undergraduate degree in 1997. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, the New Republic, Entertainment Weekly, Slate, Smithsonian, GQ, Sports Illustrated, New York Magazine, and other publications.

Halpern is also a commentator and a freelance producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered and a contributor to This American Life. Jake's hour-long radio story, "Switched at Birth," was selected by host Ira Glass as one of the eight stories that best represent This American Life to new listeners.{{cite web|last1=Glass|first1=Ira|title=New To This American Life|date=25 October 2017 |url=https://www.thisamericanlife.org/recommended/new-to-this-american-life|publisher=This American Life Website}}

His first book, Braving Home ({{ISBN|0-618-44662-1}}), considered the lives of Americans who actively chose to live in or near dangerous places like volcanoes. The book was a main selection for the Book of the Month Club by Bill Bryson. His second book, Fame Junkies ({{ISBN|0-618-45369-5}}), considers the psychological underpinnings of celebrity obsession, and was the basis for an original series on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Jake’s most recent nonfiction book, Bad Paper (2014), was excerpted as a cover story for the New York Times Magazine{{cite news|last1=Halpern|first1=Jake|title=Paper Boys: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/magazine/bad-paper-debt-collector.html|work=New York Times Magazine|date=August 14, 2014}} and was a New York Times best seller.{{cite news|title=Books - Bestsellers - Crime and Punishment|work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2014/11/09/crime-and-punishment/|accessdate=November 9, 2014}}

He co-wrote his first novel, Dormia, with Peter Kujawinski, and it was published in the spring of 2009 to mixed reviews.{{cite book|title=Dormia - GoodReads|date=2010 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5877213-dormia|publisher=GoodReads Website}} The two went on to co-write other books, including two Dormia sequels, called World's End and The Shadow Tree. Their other young adult novels include Nightfall and Edgeland.

Halpern also collaborated with illustrator Michael Sloan to create "[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/26/opinion/sunday/welcome-to-the-new-world.html?_r=0 Welcome to the New World]," a true comic about a family of Syrian refugees that ran in the New York Times.{{cite web|last1=Case|first1=Emily|title=Covering news issues with comics: 7 good questions with Jake Halpern|url=https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/good-questions/covering-news-issues-comics-7-good-questions-jake-halpern/|website=American Press Institute}}{{cite news|last1=Headlam|first1=Bruce|title=Times Journalists Use Words, Photos, Graphics and Video. And Now, a Comic Strip|url=https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/insider/times-journalists-use-words-photos-graphics-and-video-and-now-a-comic-strip.html?referer=|work=New York Times|date=May 12, 2017}} In 2018, Halpern and Sloan received the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.{{cite news|last1=Cavna|first1=Michael|title=Cartooning Pulitzer goes to a game-changer: An electronic comic book by two creators|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2018/04/16/cartooning-pulitzer-goes-to-a-game-changer-an-electronic-comic-book-by-two-creators/?noredirect=on|newspaper=Washington Post|accessdate=9 May 2018|date=16 April 2018}}

Halpern is a former Fulbright Scholar and a current fellow of Morse College at Yale, where he teaches a seminar on journalism.

Bibliography

{{Expand list|date=January 2018}}

=Books=

  • {{cite book |author=Halpern, Jake |title=Braving home : dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and other extreme locales |url=https://archive.org/details/bravinghome00jake |url-access=registration |location=Boston |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-9653252-2-6 }}
  • Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths behind America's Favorite Addiction, nonfiction (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
  • Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld, nonfiction (New York: FSG, 2014)

;Fiction

  • Dormia, fiction (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009)
  • Nightfall, fiction (New York: Putnam, 2015)
  • Edge Land, fiction (New York: Putnam, 2017)

=Essays and reporting=

Halpern, Jake (August 10, 2015). "[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-cop The Cop: Darren Wilson was not indicted for shooting Michael Brown. Many people question whether justice was done]. The New Yorker.{{cite magazine|last1=Halpern|first1=Jake|title=The Cop|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/the-cop|magazine=The New Yorker|date=August 10, 2015}}

  • {{cite magazine |author=Halpern, Jake |date=March 13, 2017 |title=A new underground railroad : refugees who fear deportation by the U.S. are sneaking into Canada |department=Letter from Buffalo |magazine=The New Yorker |volume=93 |issue=4 |pages=32–40 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/the-underground-railroad-for-refugees }}Online version is titled "The underground railroad for refugees".

References

{{Reflist}}

  • Source: Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2005.