2016-03-22

Rebecca Solnit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rebecca Solnit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit and Christian Bruno.jpg
Rebecca Solnit with cinematographerChristian Bruno in 2010
BornJune 24, 1961 (age 54)
OccupationAuthormemoirist,essayist
NationalityAmerican
SubjectCultural history,environmentalismmemoir
Notable worksWanderlust (2001), River of Shadows (2003), A Field Guide to Getting Lost(2005), The Faraway Nearby (2013), A Paradise Built in Hell (2010), Men Explain Things to Me(2014)
Website
rebeccasolnit.net
Rebecca Solnit (born June 24, 1961) is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art.[1] Solnit is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, where bi-monthly she writes the magazine's "Easy Chair" essay.

Early life and education[edit]

Solnit grew up in Novato, California. "I was a battered little kid," she said of her childhood.[2] She skipped high school altogether, enrolling in an alternative junior high in the public school system that took her through tenth grade, when she passed the GED. Thereafter she enrolled in junior college. When she was 17 she went to study in Paris, France. She ultimately returned to California and finished her college education at San Francisco State University.[3] She then received a master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984[4] and has been an independent writer since 1988.[5]

Career[edit]

Activism[edit]

Solnit has worked on environmental and human rights campaigns since the 1980s, notably with the Western Shoshone Defense Project in the early 1990s, as described in her book Savage Dreams, and with antiwar activists throughout the Bush era.[6] She has discussed her interest inclimate change and the work of 350.org and the Sierra Club, and inwomen's rights, especially violence against women.[7]

Writing[edit]

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including the Guardian newspaper and Harper's Magazine, where she is the first woman to regularly write the Easy Chair column founded in 1851. She is also a regular contributor to the political blog TomDispatchand to LitHub.[8][9]
Solnit is the author of seventeen books as well as essays in numerous museum catalogs and anthologies. Her 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster began as an essay called "The Uses of Disaster: Notes on Bad Weather and Good Government" published by Harper’s magazine the day that Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. It was partially inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which Solnit described as "a remarkable occasion...a moment when everyday life ground to a halt and people looked around and hunkered down". In a conversation with filmmaker Astra Taylor forBOMB magazine, Solnit summarized the radical theme of A Paradise Built in Hell: "What happens in disasters demonstrates everything an anarchist ever wanted to believe about the triumph of civil society and the failure of institutional authority."[6]

Awards and recognition[edit]

Solnit has received two NEA fellowships for Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan literary fellowship, and a 2004 Wired Rave Award for writing on the effects of technology on the arts and humanities.[10]In 2010 Utne Reader magazine named Solnit as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World".[11] Her The Faraway Nearby (2013) was nominated for a National Book Award,[12] and shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award.[13][14]
For River of Shadows, Solnit was honored with the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism[15] and the 2004 Sally Hacker Prize from the Society for the History of Technology, which honors exceptional scholarship that reaches beyond the academy toward a broad audience.[16] Solnit was also awarded Harvard's Mark Lynton History Prize in 2004 for River of Shadows.[17]
Solnit credits Eduardo GaleanoPablo NerudaAriel DorfmanElena PoniatowskaGabriel García Márquez, and Virginia Woolf as writers who have influenced her work.[6]

Informal recognition[edit]

Solnit is credited with the concept behind the term mansplaining, a habitual gender-based condescending language style that emerged as a term shortly after her April 2008 blog post "Men Explain Things to Me," although she did not invent the portmanteau word itself.[18][19][20]

Bibliography[edit]

Books[edit]

Essays and reporting[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Peter Terzian (July–August 2007). "Room to Roam". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
  2. Jump up^ Caitlin D. (September 4, 2014). "Why Can't I Be You: Rebecca Solnit"Rookie.
  3. Jump up^ Benson, Heidi (June 13, 2004). "Move Over, Joan Didion / Make room for Rebecca Solnit, California's newest cultural historian"SFGate.com(San Francisco).
  4. Jump up^ "Meet Our Alumni: College of Letters & Science - Authors".berkeley.edu. Regents of the University of California. 2010.
  5. Jump up^ "Rebecca Solnit"tupress.org. Trinity University Press. 2014.
  6. Jump up to:a b c Taylor, Astra (Fall 2009). "Rebecca Solnot"BOMB Magazine. Retrieved 26 July 2011.
  7. Jump up^ Interviewers: Leslie Chang and Mike Osborne (August 9, 2013). "San Francisco, the island within an island". Season 5. 25:58 minutes in. Generation Anthropocene. Missing or empty |series= (help)
  8. Jump up^ "TomDispatch author page"TomDispatch. Retrieved 11 February2016.
  9. Jump up^ "LitHub author page"LitHub. Electric Literature. Retrieved11 February 2016.
  10. Jump up^ "The Wired Rave Award". Wired Magazine. April 2004. Retrieved2009-10-08.
  11. Jump up^ "Rebecca Solnit: The Silver Cloud". Retrieved 2010-10-19.
  12. Jump up^ Critical Mass(January 13, 2014) "Announcing the 2014 Publishing Year Natinonal Book Awards." (Retrieved 4-13-14.)
  13. Jump up^ Kirsten Reach (January 14, 2014). "NBCC finalists announced".Melville House Publishing. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
  14. Jump up^ "Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013". National Book Critics Circle. January 14, 2014. RetrievedJanuary 14, 2014.
  15. Jump up^ National Book Critics Circle (2014). "All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists". Retrieved December 26, 2014.
  16. Jump up^ Society for the History of Technology (2014). "The Hacker Prize, Recipients of the Sally Hacker Prize". Retrieved December 26, 2014.
  17. Jump up^ Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard (2014). "J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project". Retrieved December 26, 2014.
  18. Jump up^ Robinson, Anna. "The Art of Mansplaining"The Nation Institute. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
  19. Jump up^ Solnit, Rebecca. "Why "Mansplaining" Is Still a Problem"AlterNet. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  20. Jump up^ Rothman, Lily (1 November 2012). "A Cultural History of Mansplaining"The Atlantic. Retrieved 20 August 2013.

External links[edit]

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