Journalist Sally Hayden and physician and associate professor Ricardo Nuila first met on the Logan Nonfiction Fellowship. It was a formative experience for them both, and among their first opportunities to connect with and learn from other writers.

Since the fellowship, where Sally found herself googling ‘how long is a book?’ and Ricardo finally felt able to piece together the fragments of his subjects, both writers have gone on to publish compelling, compassionate books which bring untold stories and scandals to light.

Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route won the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction the same year. It follows the experiences of refugees, the trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. The book examines negligence and corruption, asking: who was accountable? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn’t it being widely reported?

My Fourth Time, We Drowned is a book about people who have taken risks and made unimaginable choices in the face of systems which want them to disappear.

The People’s Hospital: The Real Cost of Life in an Uncaring Health System by Ricardo Nuila is the story of how Ben Taub Hospital strives to provide healthcare to Houston’s most vulnerable population, amidst the mayhem of American healthcare. Nuila introduces us to patients who have had to battle desperate financial circumstances as well as life-threatening illness, he poses complex moral questions about money versus healthcare, and shows us the possibilities of reform.

In this prerecorded conversation, Sally and Ricardo discuss how to sustain and engage readers through long, difficult subjects, bearing witness, and writing ‘real life’ through rhetoric, journalism, memoir and more.