Listen to "Sally Hayden on "My Fourth Time We Drowned"" on Spreaker.
One of the major challenges of writing about humanitarian issues is getting people to care. In June, the news of a sunken submersible where five people were killed dwarfed the news of the shipwreck carrying migrants across the Mediterranean — with as many as 750 lives lost. Readers become inured to tragic headlines, especially when those headlines are about people who seem so far away, and so unknown.
Journalist Sally Hayden isn’t prepared to give up the fight against public apathy. Her book “My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World Deadliest Migration Route” brings the perils of migration to life not just through her extensive reporting, but by allowing the book’s subjects to tell their stories in their own words. “I realized that we weren’t hearing from the people who had been caught at sea and forced back,” she said. “I wanted to document what was happening to them.”
About the author
Lauren Evans@laurenfaceevans
Lauren Evans was formerly an Assistant Editor/Senior Associate in the Office of the President at Devex. As a journalist, she covers international development and humanitarian action with a focus on climate and gender. Her work has appeared in outlets like Foreign Policy, Wired UK, Smithsonian Magazine and others, and she’s reported internationally throughout East Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.