Yesterday I was privileged to hear (and afterwards talk with) Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, who wrote His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. The book won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2023, the authors presenting George Floyd as the complex person he was, making mistakes but always trying to do better the next time. The authors do not focus so much on George Floyd’s death as his life and the history of his family. The family were representative of what happened to a lot of black families, just one example being a great-great grandfather able to amass 500 acres of farmland, only to have it stripped away following Reconstruction. The book is exhaustively researched and beautifully honed in a literary journalism style. In fact, I would strongly consider using this book in a journalism or writing class if I were back teaching in the university.

The authors, speaking at Texas Theater in south Dallas, were here as part of the Hay Festival Forum Dallas; they were in conversation with Dallas Morning News Executive Editor Katrice Hardy. It would be well worth your time to make the next Hay Festival Forum here.