Spots remain for LBF WordShops! Learn about the festival's master-class writing workshops and reserve your seat here.

This website has a .gov link

The .gov means it’s official.

Louisiana government websites often end in .gov. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a Louisiana government site.

HTTPS Connection

The site is secure.

The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Katie Benner

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup 2026 Katie Benner
© Andrew Lih

© Andrew Lih

Katie Benner is an investigative reporter for The New York Times, where she has covered the Department of Justice and Silicon Valley. She was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of workplace sexual harassment. She has worked at publications including CNN Money, Fortune, and Bloomberg, and is an MSNBC contributor. She has appeared on CNN, CNBC, PBS NewsHour, and the radio program Marketplace. She lives in Washington, DC.

 

Schedule

1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
State Library, Second Floor, Meeting Room
The Stories We Tell About Inequality, Race, Place, and the Myth of Progress
Monica Patrice Barra, Good Sediment: Black Ecologies and the Politics of Restoration in Coastal Louisiana
Katie Benner, Miracle Children: Race, Education and the Fate of the World
Sarah L. Webb, Colorism: The Politics of Skin Tone and How We Get Free
with moderator A.E. Rooks

2:15 pm to 3:00 pm
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

Miracle Children: Race, Education, and a True Story of False Promises

A riveting investigation into a school, a scam, and a notorious college admissions scandal that exposes the inequalities and racial segregation of American education, from two award-winning New York Times journalists

T.M. Landry College Prep, a small private school in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, boasted a 100 percent college acceptance rate, placing students at nearly every Ivy League university in the country. The spectacle of Landry students opening their acceptance letters to Harvard and Yale was broadcast on television and even celebrated by Michelle Obama. It became a national ritual to watch the miraculous success of these youngsters―miraculous because Breaux Bridge is one of the poorest counties in the country, ranked close to the bottom for test scores and high school graduation rates. T.M. Landry was said to be “minting prodigies,” and the prodigies were often black.

How did the school do it? It didn’t: It was a scam, pulled off with fake transcripts and personal essays telling fake stories of triumph over adversity. Worse, Landry’s success concealed a nightmare of alleged abuse and coercion. In a yearslong investigation, Katie Benner and Erica L. Green explored the lives of the students, the school, the town, and Ivy League admissions to understand why black teens were pressured to trade in racial stereotypes of hardship for opportunity.

Gripping and illuminating, Miracle Children argues that the lesson of T.M. Landry is not that the school gamed the system but that it played by the rules―that its deceptions and abuses were the outcome of segregated schools, inequitable education, and the belief that elite colleges are the nation’s last path to life-changing economic opportunity.