New Yorker writer to speak on ‘The Sixth Extinction’

Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer for The New Yorker, will speak at Yale on Tuesday, Nov. 11 as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism.

Kolbert will give a talk titled “The Sixth Extinction” in an event co-sponsored by the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities. The event will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center auditorium, 53 Wall St. at 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. Her stories for the magazine have included political profiles, book reviews, commentaries, and extensive writing on climate change. Her three-part series on global warming, “The Climate of Man,” won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award, and the 2006 National Academies Communication Award. Kolbert received a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 2006 and a Heinz Award in 2010, and won the 2010 National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism.

Kolbert came to the magazine from The New York Times, where she wrote the Metro Matters column and, from 1992 to 1997, was a political and media reporter. She also contributed articles to the New York Times Magazine on subjects ranging from the use of focus groups in elections to the New York water supply.

She is also an author, her books include “The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit” (2004) and “Field Notes from a Catastrophe” (2006). Her most recent book is titled “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” which was published in Feburary of this year.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism was established by Nelson Poynter, who received his master’s degree in 1927 from Yale. The fellowship brings to campus journalists from a wide variety of media outlets who have made significant contributions to their field. Among recent Poynter fellows are Natalie Jackson, Seymour Hersh, and Richard Preston.