Best-selling author, journalist and documentary filmmaker Alex Kotlowitz will present a free, public lecture titled “A Tale of Two Countries: Growing Up Poor in the World’s Richest Nation” at Bellarmine University.

This Constitution Day lecture takes place Thursday, September 17, at 6 p.m. in the Wyatt Center for the Arts’ Cralle Theater. [campus map]

“Have we lived up to the Founding Fathers' vision of a nation that reaches for justice and domestic tranquility?” asks Kotlowitz. The lecture will explore the neglected corners of America’s cities where poverty, violence and silence shape the lives of the marginalized people who live there. 

Kotlowitz’s journalism work includes stories for print, radio and television. Kotlowitz was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal from 1984 until 1993, where he wrote on urban affairs and social policy. He regularly contributes to The New York Times Magazine and the public radio series This American Life, and his articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic and Granta. He has written three books, including his nationally best-selling debut biography “There Are No Children Here.” 

Constitution Day is observed each year on September 17 to commemorate the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787. In 2004, Congress added a requirement that each education institution receiving federal funds should hold an educational program on the Constitution for students on that day. 

This event is sponsored by Bellarmine’s Brown Leadership Community, Pre-Law Society, Student Government Association, office of multicultural affairs, and the Institute for Media, Culture and Ethics.

Explore Kotlowitz's contributions to This American Life.