John Bowe (born 1964 in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over t ...

) is an American author and speech expert. He has written for ''

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

,'' ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', '' GQ'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...

'', ''

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. Initially publishing the literary journal'' Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', the company has moved t ...

'', and ''

This American Life ''This American Life'' (''TAL'') is an American monthly hour-long radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internati ...

''. His work has been featured and reviewed in the ''

Harvard Business Review ''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, M ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', and he has appeared on '' CNN'', ''

The Daily Show ''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk and satirical news television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central with release shortly after on Paramount+. ''The Daily Show'' draws its comedy and satire form fr ...

'', with Jon Stewart, the '' BBC'', and many others. He is the co-editor of ''GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs'' (with Sabin Streeter and Marisa Bowe); author of ''Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy,'' editor of ''US: Americans Talk About Love,'' and author of ''I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection.'' He co-wrote the screenplay for the film '' Basquiat'' with

Julian Schnabel Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings" — with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been ...

Early life and education

He graduated from Minneapolis' Blake School in 1982, obtained a BA in English (with honors) from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

in 1987 and earned an MFA in film from the

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

School of the Arts in 1996.

Works

''GIG''

''GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs'', co-edited with Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter, is an oral history based on

Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for '' The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral h ...

’s '' Working'', offering a collection of 126 interviews from rich to poor, giving voice to the American labor force. Excerpted in the New Yorker magazine and rated one of the Best Business Books of 2000 by Harvard Business Review.

''Nobodies''

''Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy'' is an examination of modern

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

in the United States, focusing particularly upon the widening gap between rich and poor, both in the US and globally, and what this means for notions of freedom and democracy. "Nobodies" began as an article published in 2003 for

. The book was published by Random House in September 2007. "Nobodies" follows Bowe's journey inside three illegal workplaces where foreign employees are enslaved, offering exclusive interviews and eyewitness accounts. The book exposes the corporate duplicity, subcontracting and immigration fraud, and moral sleights of hand that allow forced labor to continue in the United States. The book begins in the fields of

Immokalee, Florida (your home) , nickname = , settlement_type = Census-designated place , motto = , image_skyline = File:Immokalee-Zocalo Plaza 2018.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption ...

where underpaid or unpaid undocumented workers pick the produce that feeds the supply chains of companies such as Pepsi Company and Tropicana. Secondly, Bowe travels to

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region wit ...

, where the John Pickle Company exploited temporary workers imported from India to boost profits while making pressure tanks used by oil refineries and power plants. Lastly, in

Saipan Saipan ( ch, Sa’ipan, cal, Seipél, formerly in es, Saipán, and in ja, 彩帆島, Saipan-tō) is the largest island of the Northern Mariana Islands, a Commonwealth (U.S. insular area), commonwealth of the United States in the western Pa ...

, a U.S. commonwealth, Bowe documents an economy built upon guest workers, where 90 percent of the female population work sixty-hour weeks for $3.05 an hour and spend weekends trying to trade sex for green cards. ''Nobodies'' was named one of the best twenty books of 2007 by ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...

''. Bowe appeared on ''

'' on September 24, 2007 to talk about ''Nobodies''.

''US: Americans Talk About Love''

''US: Americans Talk About Love'' is a selection of oral histories about relationships. John Bowe collaborated with a team of interviewers and co-editors to record and collect the love stories of a diverse range of U.S citizens. The book has been translated into German, Polish, and Mandarin.

''I Have Something to Say''

''I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection'', Bowe discovers the lost art of speech training and immerses himself in a chapter of Toastmasters International to learn the meaning and value of "public speaking." Between lessons, he explores the roots of speech training and rhetoric in Ancient Greece and connects this once-universal component of education to modern problems of isolation, partisanship, and civic disengagement. I Have Something to Say is less a how-to manual than for rediscovering the importance of this basic building block of civil society.

Awards

John Bowe is a recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award the Sydney Hillman Award for journalists, writers, and public figures who pursue social justice and public policy for the common good, the Richard J. Margolis Award, dedicated to journalism that combines social concern and humor, and the Harry Chapin Media Award for reportage of hunger- and poverty-related issues.

References

External links

Bowe's official webpageJohn Bowe's appearance on the Daily Show

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bowe, John 1964 births University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni Columbia University School of the Arts alumni Living people American freelance journalists Writers from Minnesota