Dan Barry is a longtime columnist and reporter for The New York Times and the author of four books, including the forthcoming “The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland.” Set to be released in May 2016, the book tells the story of dozens of men with intellectual disability who spent decades working at an Iowa turkey-processing plant, living in an old schoolhouse, and enduring exploitation and abuse – before finding justice and achieving freedom. As the “This Land” columnist for the Times, Barry traveled to all 50 states, where he met the coroner from “The Wizard of Oz,” learned the bump-and-grind from a mostly retired burlesque queen, and was hit in the chest by an Asian carp leaping out of the Illinois River. He has since recovered—though the condition of the carp remains unknown. He has reported extensively on many topics, including the World Trade Center disaster and its aftermath and the damage to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He has also been the City Hall bureau chief, the Long Island bureau chief, a sportswriter, a general assignment reporter, and, for three years, the “About New York” columnist – all for the Times. Barry previously worked for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn., and for The Providence Journal, where he and two other 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; the series led to various reforms and the criminal indictment of the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court. Barry has also written “Pull Me Up: A Memoir”; “City Lights: Stories About New York,” a collection of his “About New York” columns; and “Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game,” which received the 2012 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing.