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Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta - Garance Franke-Ruta is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where she oversees the Politics Channel.
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She was previously national web politics editor at The Washington Post, and has also worked at The American Prospect, The Washington City Paper, The New Republic and National Journal magazines. At The Prospect she was awarded the 2007 team Hillman Prize for her work with its blog, "Tapped."

In 2006, she was fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass., and in 2007, a summer fellow with The Iowa Independent, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

She has lectured at the Kennedy School, Georgetown University, Williams College and Brandeis University and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

Born in the South of France, she grew up in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico; New York City, New York; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has resided in Washington, D.C., since graduating from Harvard in 1997.
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Iowans Respond to Stephen Bloom

By Garance Franke-Ruta

Dec 14 2011, 5:06 PM ET Comment

The University of Iowa professor's piece reflecting on 20 years in the Hawkeye state touched off a firestorm of criticism -- and praise.

MORE ON IOWA

Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life
Stephen Bloom 'Does Not Speak for the University'
The Real Iowa Bloom Is Missing

Stephen G. Bloom's piece "Observations on 20 Years of Iowa Life" has elicited a huge array of online responses, from threats against the professor to letters of praise. Obviously, no one piece can encompass how life is lived by all the people of a state of more than three million, nor all the experiences one can have in such a state -- from West Liberty, Iowa's first majority-Latino town, to the lofts, shops and restaurants of the sophisticated neighborhoods of downtown Des Moines (and elsewhere, as detailed in this Atlantic crowd-sourced guide to the state), to the industrial decline of Keokuk (which I saw first-hand while traveling with John Edwards in 2007), to the beauty of driving I-80 on a summer night, when the twinkling of fireflies in the fields act as a striking counterpart to the stars that wheel above.

Atlantic social media editor Jared Keller has compiled excerpts from the conversation sparked by Bloom's piece, below:



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