Alissa Quart

Alissa Quart (born 1972) is an American nonfiction writer, critic, journalist, editor, and poet. Her nonfiction books are Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels (2013), Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child (2007), Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers (2003), and Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America (2018), the poetry book Monetized (2015) and the poetry book Thoughts and Prayers (2019).

Alissa Quart
Quart at the 2018 Texas Book Festival
Born1972 (age 48–49)
New York City
OccupationJournalist, author, poet
NationalityAmerican
EducationBA, Brown University, 1994
Master of Science, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, 1997
Period2002–present
Notable worksHothouse Kids
Branded
Republic of Outsiders
Notable awardsNieman Fellowship, 2010
SpousePeter Maass
Children1
Website
www.alissaquart.com

Her multimedia story with Maisie Crow, "The Last Clinic" was nominated for a National Magazine Award and a Documentary Emmy in 2014.[1] She was Executive Producer of the film "Jackson" that won an Emmy for Best Documentary, Social Issue. She is Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, founded by Barbara Ehrenreich.[2] Her articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian,The Atlantic, and many other publications and she has appeared on Nightline, 20/20, the Today Show, CNN, CBC, and C-Span. She coined the term hyperlink cinema in 2005.

She has taught at Brown University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism,[3] and is a 2010 Nieman Fellowship recipient.

Early life and education

Born to two college professors, she grew up in lower Manhattan, attending Stuyvesant High School.[4] She received a BA in English Literature with Honors in Creative Writing from Brown University in 1994 then did graduate work in English Literature for a year at CUNY Graduate Center before completing a Master of Science at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1997.[5]

Books (Nonfiction)

Branded, 2003

In 2003 she published Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers[5] which illustrates and criticizes the way that corporations chase teenagers and pre-teens. From the annual Advertising & Promotion to Kids Conference[6][7] to affiliate programs by catalog retailers such as Delia's that have teenagers advise their friends on what is desirable to Disney and McDonald's holding focus groups in high schools, Quart shows how companies have become increasingly sophisticated in hooking youngsters into a world of extreme consumerism that is ultimately harmful to them socially and developmentally. She points out that companies trap these impressionable individuals "into a cycle of labor and shopping" with brands "aim[ing] to register so strongly in kids' minds that the appeal will remain for life".[5]

The book received generally favorable reviews. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review calling it a "substantive follow-up to Naomi Klein's No Logo".[6] It received consistent praise for its analysis from other sources such as The New York Times, The Nation, and the book industry monthly Bookpage.[5][7][8]

Branded has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Finnish.

Hothouse Kids, 2006

She published Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child,[9] a book that examines the cultures of extreme child-rearing that can be found across the U.S. that puts heavy emphasis on early achievement. Quart turns a skeptical eye on the growing genius-building business that includes the Baby Einstein videos, the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and IQ tests. In a book that Publishers Weekly called "first class literary journalism,"[10] she paints a somber picture of what the life of a child prodigy really looks like.

Hothouse Kids has been published in South Korea and the UK.

Republic of Outsiders, 2013

Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels (2013),[11] describes the role of cultural outsiders who are importantly changing elements of mainstream US culture via new technologies and entrepreneurialism. In a book that Publishers Weekly called "thoroughly researched and admirably evenhanded,"[12] Quart reports on self-advocacy among people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses that are usually treated with drugs. Instead of allowing doctors to define them, these people espouse “mad pride” and create online communities where peer counseling replaces institutionalization. Quart's point is that all are examples of "counterpublics" who crucially re-form what is considered acceptable, allowing further diversity of options. She ends with a powerful example of Occupy Bank Working Group, or an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street headed by an ex-banker whose goals include to make a nonpredatory credit card for the needy.[11][12]

In addition to the starred review from Publishers Weekly,[12] the book was reviewed in the Times which Quart's skill in reporting on "the experiences of ordinary people, following their realistically messy lives for year, offering us vivid portraits that are profoundly humane".[11] The book, which was included in the "brilliant" "high brow" quadrant of New York magazine's popular Approval Matrix,[13] was excerpted in O magazine's August 2013 issue[14]

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America

Alissa's latest non-fiction book is Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America. Published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June 2018, it "brings together original research and reporting to investigate how the high costs of American parenthood have bankrupted the middle class, and examines solutions that might help families across the country".[15][16][17] It was reviewed favorably by many publications, including in two reviews by The New York Times. It was also featured by Terri Gross's Fresh Air and was chosen as one of C-SPAN's books of the year.

Magazine, news and multimedia work

She coined the term hyperlink cinema in 2005 in a review of the film Happy Endings for Film Comment. In the article, she underscored director Don Roos's use of connecting scenes through happenstance, and linking text and captions under or next to a split-screen image.[18] Other films that she includes under this term: The Opposite of Sex, Magnolia, Time Code, and Paul Haggis's Crash, and the TV series 24.[18] Hyperlink cinema was further popularized by Roger Ebert in his review of Syriana the same year.[19]

Her work for The New York Times Magazine includes a feature on the indie music scene in Toronto,[20] a story about a transmale college freshman at Barnard.

Quart commissioned and helped originate Maisie Crow's 50-minute documentary about Jackson Women's Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, writing its National Magazine Award-nominated multimedia story for the Atavist,.[21]

Poetry

Quart was a poet before she became a journalist.[22] Her poetry has been published by the London Review of Books,[23] the Los Angeles Review of Books,[24] and news and culture website the Awl, among other places:[25][26] In 2002, she came out with a chapbook entitled Solarized. The work is lyrically and sonically complex, and share the thematic preoccupations of her journalism: commercialism, gender identity and being a young woman, gentrification, 1970s and indie film, advertising, adolescence, and bad tourism.[27] Of her writing process, she has said:

"Most of my poems are from experiences at the edges of, say, a reporting trip: the sensory or internal experiences, the physical American landscape I perceive rather than the one that makes it into a piece or a nonfiction book, or the emotional response to a work of art or film I've seen in the course of writing a review or an essay.... I see the 'arguments' in my poetry as being surplus: what is left over or impossible to express or too passionate or even too obvious or familiar in journalistic terms."[27]

Monetized, 2015

Monetized is her collection of her poetry. The poems reflect on consumer identities, Internet culture, gentrification, and "belatedness". Some of the poetry is autobiographical, two are responses to poems by Wallace Stevens. The book was well received by critics, and covered by the New Yorker, with Joshua Rothman describing it as "dense, playful, aphoristic,"[4] and in The New York Observer's "Innovation" section.[28] The review in Publishers Weekly praised Quart for "her keen sociological eye" and "remarkably apt cultural critiques".[29] Alternet's Lynn Stuart Parramore wrote, "Quart’s laser-sharp phrases...have a way of sticking around in your head long after you turn the final page.”[30]

Awards

Personal life

She is married to Peter Maass, a journalist, and they live in New York City.

Published works

Poetry
  • Solarized (2002, chapbook)
  • Monetized (2015)[32]
  • Thoughts and Prayers (2019)

Nonfiction
  • Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers (2003)
  • Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child (2007)
  • Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels (2013)
  • Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America (2018)

References
  1. "Nominees for the 35th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards Announced by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences". National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
  2. "About". Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
  3. "Fall 2013 Journalism J6040 section 052 MASTERS PROJECT I". Columbia University Directory of Classes. Archived from the original on 2013-12-14. Retrieved Dec 11, 2013.
  4. Rothman, Joshua (8 April 2015). "The Money Poet". Retrieved 17 April 2018 – via www.newyorker.com.
  5. Holstein, William H. (Jan 26, 2003). "BOOK VALUE; How Consumer Culture Sets Up Its Young Ducks". The New York Times.
  6. "BRANDED: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers". Publishers Weekly. Nov 25, 2002.
  7. Segall, Rebecca (Feb 6, 2003). "The New Product Placement". The Nation.
  8. Brady, Martin (March 2003). "Tracking teens and trends". Bookpage. Archived from the original on 2013-09-07. Retrieved 2013-12-12.
  9. Quart (July–August 2006). "Extreme Parenting: Does the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex enrich your child's mind—or stifle it?". The Atlantic.
  10. "Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child". Publishers Weekly. May 22, 2006.
  11. Newitz, Annalee (Nov 8, 2013). "Gate Crashers 'Republic of Outsiders,' by Alissa Quart". The New York Times.
  12. "Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels". Publishers Weekly. May 6, 2013.
  13. "The Approval Matrix: Week of August 19, 2013". New York Magazine. August 11, 2013.
  14. Quart (August 2013). "A Saner Approach? New Ways of Treating Mental Illness As diagnoses of bipolar disorder soar, a grassroots movement is offering alternatives". O.
  15. Alissa Quart personal website.
  16. Williams, M.E. Middle class shame is real: “Squeezed” author Alissa Quart on why the American dream is crumbling Salon, June 27, 2018.
  17. Review of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America by Alissa Quart. Publishers' Weekly.
  18. Quart, "Networked: Don Roos and Happy Endings," Film Comment, Aug. 1, 2005.
  19. Ebert, Roger (Dec 8, 2005). "Syriana". RogerEbert.com.
  20. Quart (February 26, 2006). "Guided by (Many, Many) Voices". The New York Times.
  21. "National Magazine Awards 2014 Finalists Announced". American Society of Magazine Publishers website. March 27, 2014. Archived from the original on March 30, 2014. Retrieved March 27, 2014.
  22. Andresen, Kristin (November 1, 2013). "Full quart press". The Writer.
  23. Quart, Alissa (Jan 24, 2013). "Two Poems". London Review of Books. Retrieved Dec 17, 2013.
  24. "Two Poems from Monetized - The Offing". 2 April 2015. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
  25. "A Poem By Alissa Quart". The Awl. July 12, 2012. Archived from the original on December 17, 2013. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  26. "A Poem By Alissa Quart". The Awl. August 16, 2013. Archived from the original on December 17, 2013. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  27. Quart and Schaff, Sara, interview, Day One, issue 10, Seattle: StoryFront, 2014.
  28. Bloomgarden-Smoke, Kara (April 21, 2015). "New Poetry Collection Depicts the Decline of Legacy Media". NY Observer.
  29. "Monetized: Alissa Quart, Author". Publishers Weekly.
  30. Parramore, Lynn Stuart (February 24, 2015). "Books: Feel Like Your Life Has Become Monetized? You're Not Alone". Alternet.
  31. "News: Nieman Foundation Announces 2009-2010 Nieman Fellows". www.nieman.harvard.edu. May 19, 2009. Archived from the original on 2013-12-17. Retrieved 2013-12-17.
  32. "Catalogue Monetized". Miami University Press.
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