For most of his working life Stephan Salisbury has been a newspaper reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer. He’s covered just about everything imaginable – from the Pennsylvania prison system to the coup in Turkey, the endless culture wars, and the rise of the right wing in American politics. Over the years, he has been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and has received special awards from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the National Association of Black Journalists. As honored as he is by such awards, and many others, the things that have been most important to him as a journalist are things that have been transformed because of his reporting and writing: A national memorial commemorating slavery at the site of the first American executive mansion, for instance. It is arguably the most visited site in Independence National Historical Park and would not even exist had he not broken the story that a proposed park building would be located atop George Washington’s long-demolished and forgotten presidential slave quarters. Now over a decade after the commemoration was erected, millions of Americans learn every year about the fusing of racial bondage and the founding of the country. Another series of stories led to recognition of a completely forgotten black Founding Father, James Dexter, whose home site was excavated and commemorated by the federal government and the National Constitution Center due to Salisbury’s efforts. Such stories, some of which won prizes, some of which did not, have rescued people and histories from oblivion and brought them into consciousness, making them part of the country’s evolving history; Salisbury believes it has been a privilege to write them. Other stories, like the obliteration of a poor mosque in Philadelphia in the wake of 9/11 and the jailing or deportation of most of its congregants, detailed in Mohamed’s Ghosts, have been unbearably sad to report and write, but serve as essential signs underscoring the enigmatic and contradictory character of America.
Salisbury, cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has written for many publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Nation, the Saturday Review, the Village Voice, and the American Poetry Review. His books include Individual Rights in the Corporation, (co-editor with Alan F. Westin), Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, and the novel, Britt & Jimmy Strike Out. He writes a now-long-running satirical daily blog, CSI: American Carnage, a distorted look at the distortions on display 24/7 in Washington DC. He grew up in Chicago and New York and is a graduate of Columbia College and the Columbia University School of the Arts. He lives in Swarthmore, Pa. with his wife, the painter Jennifer Baker.