About
“We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
Natalie Y. Moore is an award-winning journalist based in Chicago, whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. She is available for speeches or keynotes on these issues.
Natalie’s acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation received the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and was Buzzfeed’s best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.
Natalie contributed to “Southside,” a collection of stories about the criminal justice system in Chicago in collaboration with The Marshall Project/Amazon Original Stories in 2018. For the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Chicago riots, she co-wrote a 30-minute audio drama with Make Believe Association that aired on WBEZ. 16th Street Theater adapted portions of “The South Side” in 2019. Haymarket Books published “The Billboard” in March 2022. The play is part of the 2021 Bridge Program of the National New Play Network. “The Billboard” was produced by 16th Street Theater July 2022. It won a Jeff Award for best new work, short run. Natalie collaborated with Make Believe Association on the fictional Lake Song podcast.
She is a 2021 USA Fellow. The Pulitzer Center named her a 2020 Richard C. Longworth Media Fellow for international reporting. In 2021, University of Chicago Center for Effective Government (CEG), based at the the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, welcomed her in its first cohort of Senior Practitioner Fellows. Natalie teaches as an adjunct at Northwestern University. In spring 2023, she was playwright-in-residence at Chicago State University in conjunction with Chicago Dramatists. CD named her a playwright-in-residence in 2023 and bestowed her with the inaugural Lydia Diamond award.
Natalie’s work has helped shift the way Chicagoans today think about segregation in the region. She is a sought-after speaker for high school assemblies, colleges, foundations, churches, festivals and community groups. Natalie is still thrilled Alex Trebek said her name. In 2019, Natalie and her book were a “Jeopardy” clue.
Awards and Honors
- Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award
- Studs Terkel Community Media Award
- Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media – former fellow
- Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism
- Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow)
- Public Radio News Directors Incorporated
- National Association of Black Journalists
- Illinois Associated Press and Chicago Headline Club
- The Chicago Reader’s Best Journalist Award
Highlights
- Black Homeownership: The Promise and The Pitfalls
- Chicago’s Southwest Side, southwest suburbs home to major drug warehousing
- Chicago’s segregated nightlife: Why don’t we play together?
- Why The Chicago Housing Authority Failed To Meet Its Mixed-Income Ambitions
- WBEZ’s Natalie Moore offers her take on Libya
- There Goes the Neighborhood
- Federal food stamp program fails some low-income Chicagoans
- Why Trauma Centers Abandoned The South Side
- Chicago Developers Shell Out Millions Rather Than Build Affordable Housing
- Despite mandate, affluent suburbs fail to build affordable housing
- Why are we still collecting taxes to prevent white flight in Chicago?