Keynote Speaker: Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert traveled from Alaska to Greenland, visiting top scientists, to get to the heart of the debate over global warming.  Growing out of a groundbreaking three-part series in The New Yorker (which won the 2005 National Magazine Award in the category Public Interest), Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change heightens awareness of the evidence of global warming and asks what America’s public and private response to climate change should be.  In her book, Kolbert explains the scientific studies that have addressed global warming, draws frightening parallels between the world today and lost ancient civilizations, unpacks the politics of environmental policies, and presents the personal tales of those whom are being affected most – the people who make their homes near the poles and, in an eerie foreshadowing of global climate change, are watching their worlds disappear.  Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year (2006) by the New York Times Book Review.

Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1999.  She has written dozens of pieces for the magazine, including profiles of Senator Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.  Her series on global warming, “The Climate of Man,” appeared in The New Yorker in the spring of 2005; it won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine award, as well as the 2006 National Academy of Sciences Communication Award in the newspaper/magazine category.  Kolbert also received a Lannan Writing Fellowship (2006).  Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Mother Jones and have been anthologized in the books The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Political Writing.  A collection of her fictional work, The Prophet of Love and Other Tales of Power and Deceit, was published in 2004.  Prior to joining the staff of The New Yorker, Kolbert was a political reporter for The New York Times.  She is a graduate of Yale University.  She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and three sons.