Journalism
Diana Abu-Jaber
Author │ Journalist │ Essayist

A novelist and a memoirist, Abu-Jaber is credited with writing the first mainstream Arab-American novel, Arabian Jazz.  In her two successive books, the novel Crescent and her memoir The Language of Baklava, she has continued to explore issues of identity, ethnicity, and the experience of existing between cultures.  Her newest novel, Birds of Paradise, tells the story of a family in Miami facing the advent of their runaway daughter’s 18th birthday, while struggling to deal with the pain she caused when she left four years earlier.

Selected Books: Origin, The Language of Baklava, Crescent, Birds of Paradise


Read More >
Katherine Boo
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Pulitzer Prize Winner

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has devoted much of her career to writing about poverty here and abroad.  A finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize and the recipient of the 2012 National Book Award for Nonfiction, her bestseller Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a gripping narrative account of life in a Mumbai slum.  A landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the 21st century’s great, unequal cities.  In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.  With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget. 

Read More >
John Berendt
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Essayist

Novelist, journalist, and essayist John Berendt has been called “not just an urbane guide to a city’s secrets,” but also “a state-of-the-art weirdo magnet” by Time magazine’s Richard Lacayo, for the real-life eccentric and enthralling characters in his record-breaking, Pulitzer-Prize nominated Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The City of Falling Angels. Berendt’s talent for unraveling cultural, literary, and historical intrigues has served him well as a journalist, as editor of New York magazine (1977-1979), as a columnist for Esquire (1982-1994), and in his current contributions to national magazines and newspapers.

Read More >
Elizabeth Gilbert
Bestselling Author │ Short Story Writer │ Memoirist

Annie Proulx has called her “a writer of incandescent talent.” The author of 2006's runaway bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert is unquestionably one of her generation's most beloved memoirists. Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold more than ten million copies worldwide, is Gilbert's memoir of soul-searching and international exploration in the wake of her devastating divorce. Gilbert is a distinguished journalist who began her career writing for Harper's Bazaar, Spin, the New York Times Magazine, and GQ. In 2002, her book The Last American Man was a Finalist for the National Book Award. Committed, the deeply satisfying follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love, tells the story of Gilbert's unexpected plunge into second marriage—this time to Felipe, the man with whom she falls in love at the end of Eat, Pray, Love. Part memoir, part meditation on marriage as a sociohistorical institution, Committed is rich with Gilbert's bright, engaging voice and characteristic playful humor. Gilbert recently finished a novel, The Signature of All Things, to be published in the fall of 2013.

Selected Books: The Last American Man, Eat Pray Love, Committed


Read More >
Jeff Goodell
Author │ Investigative Journalist │ Energy & Environment Expert

“The greatest danger we face is not technological hubris, but human apathy.”

—Jeff Goodell

Acclaimed environmental author, investigative journalist, and coal-industry expert (Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future), Jeff Goodell trains his eye on the emergent field of geoengineering in his next book, How to Cool the Planet:  Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix the Earth’s Climate (2010).  Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and his articles appear regularly in the New York Times Magazine and Yale University’s Environment 360. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith, based on the experience of the Quecreek miners. Big Coal is the subject of a feature documentary called Dirty Business.

Selected Books: Big Coal, How to Cool the Planet


Read More >
Tracy Kidder
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Essayist

Kidder’s exceptional and prolific writing career took off in 1983 with The Soul of a New Machine, a book celebrated for its insight into the world of high-tech corporate America that earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Other bestselling works include House, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends, and Home Town. Regarded as a master of nonfiction narrative, Kidder has enjoyed enormous success with Mountains Beyond Mountains and Strength in What Remains, which have been extremely popular with campus and community Common Read programs. Mountains tells the story of charismatic humanitarian Dr. Paul Farmer and his efforts to address the global health crises of AIDS and TB.  Strength chronicles the tale of a young medical student, Deo, who survives the genocide in Burundi and emigrates to the U.S. to find redemption through education and service to others.  Both books have been enormously popular First Year Experience/Common Read selections and are masterful accounts of real people who have prevailed against seemingly impossible circumstances to better our world.  Tracy Kidder’s writing has appeared in numerous periodicals over the years, including the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Granta, and the New York Times.  His newest book, Good Prose, is a guide to the craft of nonfiction, written with his long-time editor Richard Todd.

Selected Books: Mountains Beyond Mountains, The Strength in What Remains, The Soul of a New Machine


Read More >
Alex Kotlowitz
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Documentary Filmmaker

Award-winning journalist Alex Kotlowitz, lauded for his unflinching portrayal of race and poverty in America, is the author of the bestselling works of nonfiction There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River. He recently produced the critically-acclaimed documentary The Interrupters, with director Steve James (Hoop Dreams), which was inspired by an article Kotlowitz wrote about urban violence in Chicago for the New York Times Magazine in 2008. Hailed by A.O. Scott of the New York Times as one of the “must see” documentaries of 2011, The Interrupters was praised by the Miami Herald as “a heartbreaking, empowering documentary about inner-city violence.” The film was awarded the 2012 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. A staff writer for the Wall Street Journal from 1984-1993, he remains an active journalist and is a regular contributor to National Public Radio (This American Life, All Things Considered, and Morning Edition) and the New York Times Magazine.  He is currently working on a documentary on low-wage workers for Al Jazeera America. 

Selected Books: There are No Children Here, Never a City So Real


Read More >
James Howard Kunstler
Novelist │Urban Planning Advocate │Journalist │Social Critic

The author of eight novels and countless articles and essays, Kunstler is best known for his now-classic works in the literature of urban planning and suburban critique: The Geography of Nowhere and Home From Nowhere. His more recent writings on sustainability and the environment include The Long Emergency, which explores issues of social change, community design and the economics of sustainability through the lens of increasing energy costs and natural resource depletion, and Too Much Magic, which analyzes the various technologies being suggested as magic bullets to the energy crisis. With vision, clarity and a pragmatic worldview, he argues that the time for magical thinking is over and the time to roll up our sleeves and get to work with our neighbors is at hand. Publisher’s Weekly says, “With characteristic curmudgeonly enthusiasm, Kunstler brilliantly if belligerently shows us what a pickle we’re in and how inept we are at dealing with it.”  Mr. Kunstler has delivered incisive lectures (which he aptly describes as “stand-up comedy with dark moments”) about urban design, energy issues and new economics to audiences across North America, Australia, Europe and Africa.

Selected Books: Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, Too Much Magic


Read More >
Jeanne Marie Laskas
Author │ Journalist │ Memoirist

Award-winning writer Jeanne Marie Laskas has been called “a reporting and writing powerhouse” (Rebecca  Skloot). Laskas proves it once again in Hidden America, an Oprah Must-Read Best Book that explores the lives of the millions of Americans who only rarely capture our attention or our compassion. From coal miners to cowboys to cheerleaders, Laskas employs her “intimate, insightful journalism” (Mike Sager) to teach us about the people who keep our lives running smoothly. A transformative, entertaining, and sometimes hilarious book, Hidden America makes it, as the Daily Beast concluded, “impossible not to see the world a little differently.”

Before Hidden America, Laskas wowed readers and critics alike with a trilogy of memoirs: Fifty Acres and a Poodle, The Exact Same Moon, and Growing Girls. Her long-form journalism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Allure, Ladies' Home Journal, and many others. Laskas has also been a regular contributor to Esquire, GQ, the Washington Post Magazine, and Reader's Digest. Her work has frequently been anthologized in the Best American collections, and she has received several Gold Quill Awards for excellence in journalism. Laskas is the Director of the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.


Read More >
Susan Orlean
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Essayist

Susan Orlean, the author of Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend and The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession, has been called “a kind of latter-day Tocqueville” (New York Times Book Review). One of her generation’s most distinctive journalistic voices, Orlean is fascinated by American stories of every stripe. From Rin Tin Tin, the orphaned German shepherd who became a silent film star in the 1920’s, to John Laroche, the convicted felon who slinks through the swamps of southern Florida looking for rare orchids, Orlean has an eye for the moving, the hilarious, and the surprising. She has written for OutsideEsquireRolling StoneVogue, and The Boston Globe, been a staff writer at the New Yorker for twenty years, and has edited both Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. Orlean’s writing has inspired two films, including Adaptation, the Academy Award-winning film directed by Spike Jonze and starring Meryl Streep. She is currently working on The Library Book, an exploration of the history, power and future of the endangered institutions, told through the lens of her quest to solve the unsolved 1986 arson that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library.

Selected Books: Rin Tin Tin, The Orchid Thief, My Kind of Place


Read More >
Christopher Phillips
Bestselling Author │ Founder, Constitution & Socrates Cafés │ Social Entrepreneur

Christopher Phillips, the New York Times bestselling author of Socrates Café, Six Questions of Socrates, and Socrates in Love, has a passion for inquiry. A foremost specialist in the Socratic Method, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions—as Socrates put it in Plato’s The Republic, “about the way one should live.” Phillips’s inquiries reveal surprising points of intersection between classical philosophy, modern life, and the intellectual richness of diverse societies. Energized by the initial optimism surrounding Obama’s presidency and concerned with the increasingly fierce nature of the partisanship infecting Congress, Phillips’s latest project is Constitution Café, an effort to engage everyday Americans in constructive dialogue and debate about the nature of our government, the meaning of citizenship, and our most important political documents. Phillips has taught at New York University and is the founder and executive director of the Constitution Café and the Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI).  

Christopher Phillips has a passion for inquiry. A foremost specialist in the Socratic Method, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions – “not about any chance question,” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Republic, “but about the way one should live.”

Selected Books: Constitution Café, Six Questions of Socrates, Socrates Café.

Read More >
Rebecca Skloot
Bestselling Author │ Journalist

Bestselling author Rebecca Skloot spent over ten years doggedly uncovering the truth about the life, death and ultimate "immortality" of a poor black tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks.  On a tumultuous educational path until a community college biology instructor utter the words "Henrietta Lacks," Skloot—with remarkable focus and tenacity—set off on a trajectory that would shine the national spotlight on both and become the phenomenal book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.


Read More >
Krista Tippett
Author │ Radio Show Host │ Journalist

“It’s always been very important to me to enlarge imaginations about how this part of life we call religious and spiritual actually works in real, far-flung, 21st-century lives.”

—Krista Tippett

A noted commentator on religion, ethics, and spirituality, Krista Tippett is the award-winning host of public radio’s Krista Tippett On Being (formerly Speaking of Faith), a weekly radio program carried by more than 200 public radio affiliates across the U.S. Tippett is highly regarded for the insight she brings to interfaith conversations about belief, meaning, ethics, and religion in a climate too often marred by polarization and partisanship.  She is the author of Einstein’s God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit and Speaking Of Faith.  She is currently working on The Civil Conversations Project and finishing a new book, slated for publication in 2014.

Selected Books: Speaking of Faith, Einstein's God


Read More >
Norah Vincent
Bestselling Author │ Cultural Critic │ Journalist

Called “the new Steinem” by William Safire, Norah Vincent took a leave from writing her nationally syndicated political opinion columns in order to write her New York Times bestseller Self-Made Man, the story of a woman living, working, and dating in drag as a man. Narrating her journey with exquisite insight, empathy, and humor, Vincent ponders the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as she explores firsthand who men really are when women aren’t around. Her next work of nonfiction,Voluntary Madness, is a riveting work that exposes the state of mental healthcare in America from the inside out. Vincent’s newest book, a searing novel entitled Thy Neighbor was published in fall 2012.

Selected Books: Self-Made Man, Voluntary Madness, Thy Neighbor


Read More >
William T. Vollmann
Novelist │ Short Story Writer │ Journalist

William T. Vollmann is a monster, a monster of talent, ambition and accomplishment."

—Los Angeles Times

Brilliant and prolific—with 23 books to date, counting the seven-volume, 3,352-page, Rising Up and Rising Down series—Vollmann has won admiration and accolades from many quarters for his unique voice and quest for “journalistic immediacy.” He is the recipient of the National Book Award for Fiction for Europe Central, the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction (The Atlas), the Whiting Award (You Bright and Risen Angels), nominations for two National Book Critics Circle Awards (Rising Up and Rising Down, and Imperial) and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Letters and Arts. He is currently working on The Dying Grass, the latest novel in the "Seven Dreams" series, and Last Stories, a collection of ghost stories due out in Spring 2014. 

Read More >