As a person with a somewhat unconventional job, writer Jeff Biggers came to City High School with a goal of educating students about his work.

“I don’t consider myself a journalist,” Biggers said. “I’m a storyteller.”

Biggers got his start in “oral history” while working on a farm in Appalachia and listening to the stories of coal miners. This experience made him notice just how many amazing stories had been lost in time.

“[I wanted to] bring stories out of the shadows that nobody knew about,” Biggers said. “[I wanted to find people] who didn’t have a voice in society and bring their stories out.”

Two of Biggers’ recent books aim to do just that, one of them being the story of immigrants crossing the Mediterranean and the other about Anne Royall, a female muckraker who ran her own newspaper.

“[I looked at the immigrants] as a journalist and asked [myself] how can I put a face on these people? Give them a name, give them a story?” Biggers said.  [And I looked at Anne Royall and asked] how can I rescue this journalist from history?”

Biggers has another big book project about a vision of an Iowa City where the water is safer and coal power has been replaced. He encourages people to consider where their resources are coming from and what impact they have.

“This is your city in the future,” Biggers said.

Despite the fact that all these stories seem very different, Biggers believes that they are easily connected.

“I’ve been [working on] the ancient past, the historical past, and the future,” he said. “As a journalist, I believe that past isn’t past, past is a presence in our life. How do we conjure that past and apply it to where we are?”