THE 40% PROJECT: An Oral History of Gun Violence in America

By Holly Werner-Thomas

With 110,000 Americans shot every year, gun violence is a public health crisis. Indeed, forty percent of Americans will either be shot or know someone who has been shot in their lifetimes. “THE 40% PROJECT: An Oral History of Gun Violence in America” centers the life stories of survivors and includes people from New York City to suburban Florida to rural Louisiana to sprawling Phoenix to small town Washington State. They are women and men, sons, fathers, wives, girlfriends, young single men, divorced, middle-aged women, widows, nieces, mothers and friends. The project addresses the question, how do we make meaning in the aftermath of violence? But it also has social transformation at its heart. My sincere hope is that the personal testimony of survivors can become part of the process of change.

Holly Werner-Thomas is a writer and oral historian whose practice is grounded in historical scholarship and current events, but who has a passion for true stories no matter the topic. She is a graduate of the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University, where she initiated an ongoing effort to capture the stories of gun violence victims (“The 40 Percent Project: An Oral History of Gun Violence in America”). Her documentary play based on the interviews, The Survivors, won the Columbia University 2020 Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award. Holly is on an upcoming OHA panel this fall, “Is Oral History White? Investigating Race in Three Baltimore Oral History Projects.” She is also currently visiting oral history consultant for History Associates, Inc., leading projects for the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Lemelson-MIT Program.