About the Author
Alice Driver is an award winning investigative journalist and celebrated writer from the Ozark Mountains. She won the 2024 J. Anthony Lukas prize for her book, Life and Death of the American Worker. Alice Driver won the James Beard Award in 2023 for investigative reporting with the team at Civil Eats. She has written for news outlets such as CNN, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Oxford America, and National Geographic. In her work and as a keynote speaker, Driver focuses on the American food system, immigration, human rights, and unjust labor practices.
In Life and Death of the American Worker, Alice Driver exposes the toxic labor practices at the largest meatpacking company in America, the Arkansas-headquartered Tyson Foods, where a deadly accident occurred in 2011. Alice Driver interviewed various immigrant workers who survived, and she shares their stories of abuse and fighting back. During her reporting, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and these workers faced a new onslaught of unsafe working conditions. Her nuanced, honest reporting will forever change how we think about the people who prepare our food.
Alice Driver expands on her book as a keynote speaker by sharing stories of the immigrant workers at Tyson to speak about the intersection of labor rights and immigration. She carefully weaves in the mistreatment of immigrants beyond the working world to educate audiences about the challenges facing migrant workers living in the United States.
She lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she is a Journalist in Residence at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, part of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She has a PhD and MA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Kentucky and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She is also the author of More or Less Dead, which analyzes how violence against women has been represented. She attended Berea College and studied Spanish and Portuguese at Middlebury College Language Schools.
Contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau to book Alice Driver for speaking events as a keynote speaker on immigration and human rights. Use the Request a Speaker form or email info@simonspeakers.com to speak to Alice Driver booking agent to request her speaking fee, appearance information, and event availability.
Raves and Reviews
Not since The Jungle has a book punched me quite literally in the stomach like this one has. Alice Driver’s invitation to sit at the table with the workers who package our dinners, who create the nuggets we hand our children in the backseats of our cars, is an unforgettable experience. Life and Death of the American Worker is a masterpiece that will be referenced for generations.”
—Stephanie Land, bestselling author of Maid and Class
With an investigative reporter’s relentless eye, Alice Driver exposes the cruelty of the meatpacking industry, a world in which immigrant workers risk life and limb to process poultry for consumers’ convenience. In heartbreaking detail, Life and Death of the American Worker focuses on the very human consequences of our choices and the appalling ways that people in power dodge our nation’s labor and environmental laws in the pursuit of profit.”
—Rachel Slade, author of Making It in America and Into the Raging Sea
This is an unforgettable piece of literary journalism that illuminates the way our world really works. Alice Driver is big-hearted and tireless as she plunges into the darkest reaches of the modern food system, and the story she reveals is shocking but also deeply humane and surprisingly inspiring. This is a landmark book about power in America today.”
—Christopher Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of The Meat Racket and Kochland
This devastatingly frank, brutally detailed peek into the meatpacking industry brilliantly exposes a damaging system that must be reformed…a vital work of journalism. An astonishing exposé of the American meatpacking industry’s exploitation of its incarcerated and immigrant workforce.”
—Kirkus Reviews
This is one of the most vital books of our time. An antidote to the racist propaganda behind the rise of Trumpism, the Life and Death of the American Worker honors the invisibilized people who sacrifice blood and well-being to feed us, who are too often killed in the shadows by profit-hungry companies that escape accountability with the help of corrupt politicians from both political parties. Alice Driver is a rare type of journalist: one who can journey into the most bloodstained and deplorable corners of this world without getting lost in the dark. She carries the light of the victims. She’ll light a fire under you. May every American read this book.”
—Jean Guerrero, author of Crux and Hatemonger
In the Media
“Opinion: Abbott’s war on migration has led to another tragedy in Texas”
“Opinion: Mexico’s historic moment makes me wonder if I’ll live to see a US woman president”
“Opinion: Lab-grown meat is an expensive distraction from reality”
“Opinion: Trump’s immigration policy was a fiasco. Why hasn’t Biden fixed it yet?”
“Eating Meat While Deporting Those Who Produce It”
“Meet the Immigrant Workers Taking On America’s Largest Meatpacking Company”
“‘A good Southern story’: A Q&A with Alice Driver”
“Arkansas journalist Alice Driver nominated for another James Beard Media Award”
“Tyson Says Its Nurses Help Workers. Critics Charge They Stymie OSHA”
