Alan Weisman
Encyclopedia
Education and career
Weisman holds both a bachelor's and master's degree in literature from Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
. He is Laureate Associate Professor in Journalism and Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, where he leads an annual field program in international field journalism. He has also taught writing and journalism at Prescott College
Prescott College
Prescott College is a private liberal arts college in Prescott, Arizona, founded in 1966. It is a non-profit organization which has an undergraduate body of roughly 800 students, and an average student to faculty ratio of 7:1 in on-campus classrooms...
and Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
and has been a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
.
Work
He has written several books and won numerous international awards for his work in journalism and literature, the most recent being the critically acclaimed The World Without UsThe World Without Us
The World Without Us is a non-fiction book about what would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared, written by American journalist Alan Weisman and published by St. Martin's Thomas Dunne Books. It is a book-length expansion of Weisman's own February 2005 Discover...
, which describes a post-human scenario of the planet. Among his other works are Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World (1998), winner of the Social Inventions Award from the Global Ideas Bank, An Echo In My Blood (1999), La Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico, and We, Immortals (1979). His reports on Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Orion
Orion (magazine)
Orion is a bimonthly, advertisement-free, magazine focused on nature, the environment, and culture, addressing environmental and societal issues....
, Audubon, Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
, Discover
Discover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
, Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler is a US magazine published by Condé Nast. It has its origins in a mailing sent out by the Diners Club club beginning in 1953, listing locations that would take the card. It began taking advertising in 1955. In order to attract more advertisers, it became a full-fledged magazine,...
, Resurgence
Resurgence
Resurgence is a British bi-monthly magazine which has been described as the artistic and spiritual voice of the green movement in Great Britain. Resurgence was founded in the 1960s by John Papworth....
, and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Writing 2006.
Weisman is also an editor of radio documentaries for Homelands Productions, creating reports for National Public Radio.
Awards and media attention
Among his awards and citations are the Four Corners Award for Best Nonfiction Book, a Los Angeles Press Club Award for Best Feature Story, a Best of the West Award in Journalism, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Citation, the Unity Media Award, the Brazilian government's Premio Nacional de Jornalismo Radiofonico, and major grants from The Ford Foundation, the Corporation for Public BroadcastingCorporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...
, the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
and the MacArthur Foundation
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States. Based in Chicago but supporting non-profit organizations that work in 60 countries, MacArthur has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978...
.
Weisman appeared as a guest on The Daily Show
The Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
on August 21, 2007.
Personal life
He lives with his wife, bronzeBronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
sculptor Beckie Kravetz, in western Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
.