2003 - John Bowe

Bowe's investigation of the enslavement of a group of Mexican farmworkers in South Florida resulted in an article which appeared in the April 21, 2003, issue of The New Yorker magazine. "The story," says Bowe, "describes an industry with conditions so exploitive and protections so minimal that the occasional occurrence of slavery is less an accident than a foregone conclusion." Bowe is currently at work on a book for Random House about the increasing frequency of other slavery cases throughout the U.S.

Bowe received an MFA from Columbia University's Graduate Film Program in 1996 and co-wrote (with Julian Schnabel) the screenplay for the film "Basquiat". He is the co-editor of the book GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Prospect, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, among other publications.

Update

John Bowe is the winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for Slavery Inc., to be published by Random House.

"John Bowe's work-an examination of slavery throughout the modern world, including the United States-is characterized by a reasoned and painstaking approach to the gathering of his material," said jurors. "His description has no taint of moral superiority. His writing is understated and stylish; he does not labor to make points, he allows the inexorable drift of his narrative to inform and in all places avoids sensationalism. His account gathers force by means of an accumulation of detail rendered with a steady objectivity. Bowe has drawn the reader's awareness to intolerable practices, abuses of the deepest and most indisputable rights of humanity-the right to be free of oppression and economic tyranny. The slow movement forward of human rights will almost surely be advanced by his book."