Former AP reporter in Haiti, Jonathan Katz, to speak at Bridgewater College

Jonathan Katz, author of The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster, will speak at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, in Cole Hall at Bridgewater College.

A former Associated Press reporter, Katz – who lived in Haiti from 2007-11 – was the only full-time American news correspondent in Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, when a deadly earthquake struck the nation.

Katz was inside his house when it buckled along with hundreds of thousands of others. Though his home was destroyed, he survived, largely unscathed.

The Big Truck that Went By is a first-hand account taking readers inside the terror of that day, the devastation visited on ordinary Haitians, and through the monumental – yet misbegotten – rescue effort that followed.

Katz was awarded the 2010 Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism and the 2012 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award for The Big Truck That Went By. The book also won the 2013 WOLA-Duke Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America and was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program. He received a National Headliners Award and a Michael Kelly Award for the “fearless pursuit and expression of truth.”

In 2013, Katz was named one of Diplomatic Courier Magazine’s Top 99 Foreign Policy Leaders Under 33.

In his seven years with the AP, Katz also reported from Washington, D.C. Mexico City, Santo Domingo, New York, Jerusalem and the United Nations.

Katz has contributed to numerous publications, including Slate, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Gawker and The Daily Beast. He has been a guest on radio and television, including NBC Nightly News, the BBC, MSNBC, Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera and NPR (National Public Radio).

Sponsored by the Kline-Bowman Endowment Fund for Creative Peacebuilding, the program is open to the public at no charge.

Bridgewater College is a private, four-year liberal arts college located in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Founded in 1880, it was the state’s first private, coeducational college. Today, Bridgewater College is home to approximately 1,850 undergraduate students.