Elizabeth Kolbert to Speak on Her New Book About Mass Extinctions

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 26, 2014—Author and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert will speak at Williams College on Wednesday, April 23. She will read from her new book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History about mass extinctions past and present. A discussion will follow. The event will take place at 5:30 p.m., in the rotunda of the Williams College Museum of Art. The event is free and open to the public.

Kolbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she writes about politics and the environment. She is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (2006) and The Prophet of Love and Other Tales of Power and Deceit (2004). In February, Kolbert appeared on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” to discuss her latest book The Sixth Extinction (2014).

Before joining The New Yorker, Kolbert was a reporter at The New York Times for more than a decade. She has received numerous awards, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award, the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the National Magazine Award for Commentary, the National Academies Communications Award, the Heinz Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Science Writing.

At Williams, Kolbert participated in last year’s David G. Hartwell ’63 Science Fiction Symposium, and in the spring of 2012 she was the W. Ford Schumann Visiting Professor in Democratic Studies.

Kolbert received her B.A. from Yale University in 1983.  

The event is sponsored by the Center for Environmental Studies.

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