Author Alison Flowers

About

Alison Flowers is an investigative journalist and producer. She produced and appeared in the 7-part investigative podcast “Somebody” about the 2016 murder of Courtney Copeland (co-produced by the Invisible Institute, The Intercept, Topic Studio, iHeart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV). Her work has appeared in The Guardian, TIME, The Village Voice, VICE, Chicago Reader, The Intercept, and she is a two-time winner of the Hillman Foundation’s Sidney Award. In 2019, she co-produced the SHOWTIME documentary “16 Shots” on the police killing of Laquan McDonald, which received Television Academy Honors for documentary special.

Flowers works at the Invisible Institute, a production company on the South Side of Chicago, and she is an alumni fellow with the Social Justice News Nexus, an investigative journalism project supported by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

She is the author of “Exoneree Diaries: The Fight for Innocence, Independence and Identity” (Haymarket Books, 2016), first place winner of the 2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award (Small Press), first place winner of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association’s Mate E. Palmer Professional Communications Contest, and the Chicago Writer’s Association’s Honorable Mention for Book of the Year in Nonfiction. The title was also selected by the Illinois Secretary of State for the statewide “Illinois Reads” program and earned a 2016 Nautilus Silver Award for Journalism and Investigative Reporting. In 2013, Flowers produced a multimedia series about exonerees for Chicago Public Media and NPR affiliate WBEZ. The yearlong project was a finalist for a national Online Journalism Award. Flowers also contributed to the anthology “Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States.”

Flowers has been quoted in justice-focused stories in numerous media outlets, including Newsweek, USA Today, Vox, ABC News, The New York Daily News and the Christian Science Monitor. In 2016, she was featured at Book Expo America and on the Chris Hedges’ “On Contact” program, as well as many other TV and radio shows, including “Democracy Now!”.

From 2011 to 2013, Flowers worked as a research associate at Northwestern University’s Medill Justice Project where she contributed to the investigations of potentially wrongful convictions and explored other systemic criminal justice issues. Flowers wrote several stories for the project’s “Spotlight on Shaken-Baby Syndrome,” which was awarded a Peter Lisagor Award by the Chicago Headline Club, the largest chapter of the national Society of Professional Journalists. Her journalism also contributed to the release of an innocent prisoner.

Prior to her work at Medill, Flowers worked as an on-air TV reporter in Georgia. There she broke the story when serial murder crime scene evidence — viable  material for DNA testing that a judge testified in federal court had been destroyed — was discovered in a police department basement. The revelation ultimately led to a stay in a death row inmate’s scheduled execution, resulting in the first DNA tests in the more than 30-year-old case. Flowers’ work also made national headlines when she reported that a Georgia homeless shelter discriminated against LGBTQ community members. In another watchdog story, a police chief and Georgia peace officer trainer resigned after Flowers brought to light he had fired a warning shot at a man suspected of marijuana possession.

Flowers is a Northwestern University alumna, having earned a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism in 2009. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized a short documentary that Flowers produced as a semi-finalist for a student Academy Award in 2010, and the same piece won in a social change category in an online film festival. She also holds a graduate liberal arts degree in Religion and Literature. Flowers is a member of the journalism honor society KAPPA TAU ALPHA, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association for Women Journalists and the Journalism and Women Symposium. Flowers is also an alumna of The OpEd Project and a volunteer mentor for GlobalGirl Media, an organization that empowers young women from underserved communities around the world through new media leadership training.

Books

  • Exoneree Diaries: The Fight for Innocence, Independence and Identity

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