Andrea Elliott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who spent nearly a decade reporting for the New York Times on eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani was named after a brand of bottled water that her mother could never afford. Dasani comes of age as New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.

When, aged thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

In January 2022 Elliott came to Intelligence Squared to discuss the themes of her bestselling book Invisible Child, which was a Barack Obama Favourite Book of the Year, an astonishing story about a child, a family, and the failure of institutions to help them.

Praise for Invisible Child

A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021

“A vivid and devastating story of American inequality.” The New York Times

“Hands down the best book I have read in years.” Thomas Harding, bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake.