Rebecca Solnit
Encyclopedia
Rebecca Solnit is a writer who lives in San Francisco. She has written on a variety of subjects including the environment, politics, place, and art.
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 exam. Thereafter she enrolled in junior college. When she was 17 she went to study in Paris
. She ultimately returned to California and finished her college education at San Francisco State University
when she was 20. She then received a Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley
in 1984 and has been an independent writer since 1988. Prior to this she was a museum researcher and art critic. She credits her education in journalism and art criticism with strengthening her critical thinking skills and training her to quickly develop expertise in the great variety of subjects her books have covered.
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. Solnit has also followed and participated in various revolutions worldwide, including Tiananmen Square
, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
, and the Velvet Revolution
.
Solnit has received many awards for her writing: a Guggenheim Fellowship
, a Lannan literary fellowship, two NEA Fellowships for Literature, and a 2004 Wired Rave Award for writing on the effects of technology on the arts and humanities. In 2010, Utne Reader
magazine named Solnit as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." Solnit credits Eduardo Galeano
, Pablo Neruda
, Ariel Dorfman
, Elena Poniatowska
, Gabriel García Márquez
, and Virginia Woolf
as writers who have influenced her work.
Her writing has appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including at the website Tomdispatch.com.
Solnit is the author of twelve books as well as essays in numerous museum catalogues and anthologies. Her 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster began as an essay entitled "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
for BOMB 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."
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 exam. Thereafter she enrolled in junior college. When she was 17 she went to study in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. She ultimately returned to California and finished her college education at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
when she was 20. She then received a Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in 1984 and has been an independent writer since 1988. Prior to this she was a museum researcher and art critic. She credits her education in journalism and art criticism with strengthening her critical thinking skills and training her to quickly develop expertise in the great variety of subjects her books have covered.
Solnit has worked on environmental and human rights campaigns since the 1980s, notably with the Western Shoshone
Western Shoshone
Western Shoshone comprises several Shoshone tribes that are indigenous to the Great Basin and have lands identified in the Treaty of Ruby Valley 1863. They resided in Idaho, Nevada, California, and Utah. The tribes are very closely related culturally to the Paiute, Goshute, Bannock, Ute, and...
Defense Project in the early 1990s, as described in her book Savage Dreams, and with antiwar activists throughout the Bush era. Solnit has also followed and participated in various revolutions worldwide, including Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square is a large city square in the center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen Gate located to its North, separating it from the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world...
, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico....
, and the Velvet Revolution
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
.
Solnit has received many awards for her writing: a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
, a Lannan literary fellowship, two NEA Fellowships for Literature, and a 2004 Wired Rave Award for writing on the effects of technology on the arts and humanities. In 2010, Utne Reader
Utne Reader
Utne Reader is an American bimonthly magazine. The magazine collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment from generally alternative media sources, including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music and DVDs...
magazine named Solnit as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." Solnit credits Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Galeano
Eduardo Hughes Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego and Las venas abiertas de América Latina which have been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and...
, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, Ariel Dorfman
Ariel Dorfman
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.-Personal...
, Elena Poniatowska
Elena Poniatowska
Elena Poniatowska is a Mexican journalist and author. Her generation of writers include Carlos Fuentes, José Emilio Pacheco and Carlos Monsiváis.-Life:Poniatowska was born in Paris to Prince Jean Joseph Evremont Sperry Poniatowski and Paula Amor Yturbe...
, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
, and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
as writers who have influenced her work.
Her writing has appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including at the website Tomdispatch.com.
Solnit is the author of twelve books as well as essays in numerous museum catalogues and anthologies. Her 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster began as an essay entitled "The Uses of Disaster: Notes on Bad Weather and Good Government" published by Harper’s Magazine the day that Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
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
Astra Taylor
Astra Taylor is a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker and writer, best known for her 2005 film, Zizek!, about the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and for her 2008 film, Examined Life....
for BOMB Magazine
Bomb Magazine
BOMB is a quarterly magazine edited by artists and writers. It is composed, primarily, of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplines — visual art, literature, music, film, theater and architecture....
, 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."
Selected works
- Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era (City Lights Books, 1990)
- Savage Dreams: A Journey Into the Landscape Wars of the American West (Sierra Club BooksSierra Club BooksSierra Club Books is the publishing division of the Sierra Club, founded in 1960 by then Sierra Club President David Brower. Volumes intended for club members had been published prior to 1960. In addition, books under their name had been published before 1960, but done through already established...
, 1994) - A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland (Verso, 1997)
- Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Viking, 2000)
- Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism (Verso, 2000), co-authored and photographed by Susan Schwartzenberg
- As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (University of Georgia Press, 2001)
- River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (Viking, 2003), winner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardNational Book Critics Circle AwardThe National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
in Criticism and of the Mark Lynton History PrizeMark Lynton History PrizeThe Mark Lynton History Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book "of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression"...
. - Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Nation Books, 2004)
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Penguin, 2005)
- Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers (Trinity University Press, 2005), with Mark KlettMark KlettMark Klett is an American photographer. Klett was born in Albany, NY. After getting a B.S. from St. Lawrence University in Geology in 1974 he worked as a photographer with the U.S. Geological Survey...
and Byron Wolfe - After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire1906 San Francisco earthquakeThe San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
(University of California Press, 2006) co-authored by Philip L. Fradkin, Mark Klett, and Michael Lundgren - Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics (University of California Press, 2007)
- "News from Nowhere: Iceland's polite dystopia". Harper's Magazine. October 2008.
- A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (Viking, 2009)
- The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle (AK Press, 2009) co-authored by David Solnit
- A California Bestiary (Heyday Books, 2010), with illustrations by Mona Caron
- Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (University of California Press, 2010)