Author and journalist Dan Barry returning to SJU to talk about his latest book

Award-winning author and journalist Dan Barry returns to Saint John's University to talk about his latest book, "The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland" at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8 at the Saint John's Pottery Studio.

The presentation from Barry, a reporter and columnist at the New York Times newspaper, is free and open to the public.

 "The Boys in the Bunkhouse" tells the story about the exploitation of a group of Texas men with intellectual disabilities who lived in near servitude for more than 30 years in Atalissa, Iowa. The men were "essentially kidnapped by an entrepreneurial huckster," according to writer Sasha Abramsky in a review in the Times.

"T.H. Johnson, a hard-drinking, hard-talking rancher, realized he could use these 'boys' as cheap labor - since federal labor laws allowed employers to pay subminimum wages to workers with disabilities — all while pretending to be a good Samaritan to men released from the 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'-like conditions of Texas institutions," Abramsky wrote.

Before dawn each morning, the men were bused to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging and $65 a month. They suffered neglect, exploitation and physical abuse while living in an old schoolhouse, until a Des Moines Register reporter, several social workers and a federal labor law attorney eventually reported the story.

Barry is making his second trip in four years to SJU. In 2012, he presented a reading and conversation from his book, "Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption and Baseball's Longest Game" about the 33-inning minor league game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester (New York) Red Wings.

He was named the 2012 recipient of the PEN/ESPN Award for Sports Literary Writing for "Bottom of the 33rd."

Barry writes the "This Land" column for the Times, a feature that he inaugurated in January 2007. Barry joined the Times in September 1995.

He has won several prestigious journalism honors. In 1992, Barry and two other Providence Journal reporters won a George Polk Award for an investigation into the causes of a state banking crisis. In 1994, he and the other members of the Journal's investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about Rhode Island's court system.

He was also twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing: in 2006, for his slice-of-life reports from hurricane-battered New Orleans, and in 2010, for his coverage of how the Great Recession changed lives in America.

Barry's presentation is sponsored by the University Chair in Critical Thinking, SJU Pottery Studio/Artist in Residence and the Joseph P. Farry Professor in the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement.