Journalist Brittany Hailer to Give Glasgow Endowment Reading at W&L Hailer will give a public lecture on March 31 at 6 p.m. in Northen Auditorium inside Leyburn Library.

By Erica Turman
March 22, 2022

Washington and Lee University presents a public reading with Brittany Hailer, an award-winning journalist and director of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, on March 31 at 6 p.m. in Northen Auditorium on the W&L campus.

Hailer will read from her memoir and poetry collection, “Animal You’ll Surely Become.” The lecture is free and open to the public, and there will be books for sale following the event.

“In her innovative memoir, Brittany Hailer uses fairy tales to frame and interpret trauma, addiction, and what it means to be a woman in this world,” said Lesley Wheeler, Henry S. Fox Professor of English at W&L and poetry editor for Shenandoah magazine. “I’m so excited to share her powerful work with the campus community.”

Hailer won a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania in 2019 and a Robert L. Vann Award of Excellence for investigative/enterprise reporting from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for her stories on people impacted by the opioid epidemic. She received another Golden Quill Award in 2020 for her essay narrating her experience investigating the opioid crisis while her father struggled with alcoholism and homelessness.

Hailer is a recipient of The Pittsburgh Foundation and Staunton Family Farm Foundation funds. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Sierra Club Magazine, NPR, Longform, Hobart and Booth.

Hailer was selected to be a Justice Reporting Fellow in 2018 as part of the John Jay/Langeloth Foundation Fellowship on “Reinventing Solitary Confinement” and again in 2020 for “Justice and the Pandemic.” Since then, she has investigated how the pandemic has affected the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) jail, including its kitchen, COVID-19 mitigation efforts, and isolation of the sick. As part of Chatham’s Words Without Walls program, she taught creative writing classes at the Allegheny County Jail and Sojourner House, and now teaches creative writing and journalism at the University of Pittsburgh.

The event is sponsored by the Glasgow Endowment.