How Do You Write About Flint?

As the journalist Anna Clark starts work on her forthcoming book about the Flint water crisis, she’s leaving herself room to follow new leads. She hopes a book-length project will cement the urgency of the story about how corrosive water pulled lead from pipes and poisoned residents, but she hasn’t finished hammering out the thesis that will comprise the book’s spine. “Ideas are still being shaped,” she says. By listening as locals guide conversation, she adds, themes will continue to crystallize.

Clark lived in Detroit until relocating to Ann Arbor this fall for a yearlong stint as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where she’ll work on the book and sharpen her knowledge of environmental law. From Detroit, Clark—who recently inked a deal with Metropolitan Books—tracked the story of Flint. Her writing about water debacles has appeared in The New York Times, ELLE, Next City, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among other outlets.