Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert (born 1961) is an American journalist and author and visiting fellow at Williams College. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, and as an observer and commentator on environmentalism for The New Yorker magazine. As of March 2017, Kolbert serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board.

Kolbert spent her early childhood in the Bronx, New York; her family then relocated to Larchmont, New York, where she remained until 1979.

After graduating from Mamaroneck High School, Kolbert spent four years studying literature at Yale University. In 1983, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Universität Hamburg, in Germany.

Elizabeth Kolbert started working for The New York Times as a stringer in Germany in 1983. In 1985, she went to work for the Metro desk. Kolbert served as the Times' Albany bureau chief from 1988 to 1991, and wrote the Metro Matters column from 1997 to 1998.

Since 1999, she has been a staff-writer for The New Yorker.

She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her book "The Sixth Extinction" in 2015. [1] She received the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism at Dickinson College in 2016 and the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017. [2] She has received two National Magazine Awards, for Public Interest in 2006 [3] and for Reviews and Criticism in 2010 [4]

Kolbert resides in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband, John Kleiner, and three sons. She appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on February 11, 2014, to discuss her book The Sixth Extinction.

• 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award
• 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest
• 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship
• 2006 National Academies Communication Award
• 16th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on global change, 2010
• 2010 National Magazine Award for Commentary
• 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Science Writing
• 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
• 2016 Sam Rose '58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Environmental Activism
• 2017 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award