Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist, author and associate professor of journalism at New York University, who writes about race and history as a contributing writer for The New York Times. Her work has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Biographers International Organization, the MacDowell artist residency program and others.
At MacDowell, she worked on her latest book, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church (Random House, 2023.) It was selected as a notable book of 2023 by the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, Time magazine, the Washington Post, the Chicago Public Library and Kirkus Reviews. The 272 won a 2024 American Book Award, a 2024 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers and was longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
Swarns is also the author of American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama (Amistad, 2012) and a co-author of Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archives (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2017.)
Rachel L. Swarns
Fellow Works Supported by MacDowell
The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church (Nonfiction Book)
Studios
Garland
Rachel L. Swarns worked in the Garland studio.
Marian MacDowell and friends originally named this studio in memory of Anna Baetz, the nurse who helped care for Edward MacDowell in the waning years of his life. With generous support from the Garland family, the studio was renovated in 2013 and renamed the Peter and Mary Garland Studio. The inward opening, diamond-pane windows were replaced…