Rebecca Solnit

{{Infobox writer

| name = Rebecca Solnit

| image = Rebecca Solnit, 2018.jpg

| caption = Solnit in 2018

| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1961}}

| birth_place = Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.

| death_date =

| death_place =

| occupation = {{hlist|Author|memoirist|essayist}}

| subject = {{hlist|Cultural history|feminism|environmentalism|memoir}}

| notableworks = {{ubl|River of Shadows|The Faraway Nearby|A Paradise Built in Hell|Men Explain Things to Me}}

| website = {{URL|rebeccasolnit.net}}

| years_active = 1988–present

| education = San Francisco State (BA)
UC Berkeley (MA)

}}

Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is an American writer and activist. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.{{cite magazine|title=Room to Roam |magazine=Columbia Journalism Review |last=Terzian |first=Peter |date=August 16, 2007 |url=https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/room_to_roam.php}}

Solnit is the author of seventeen books, including River of Shadows, which won the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism; A Paradise Built in Hell, from 2009, which charts community responses to disaster; The Faraway Nearby, a wide-ranging memoir published in 2013; and Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of essays on feminism and women's writing first published in 2014.

Early life and education

Solnit was born in 1961{{cite news|title=Rebecca Solnit: How Women Are Changing the World |first=Jon |last=Wiener |journal=The Nation |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/rebecca-solnit-how-women-are-changing-the-world/ |date=March 10, 2017 |issn=0027-8378}} in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to a Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother.{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/29/rebecca-solnit-california-dreaming-life |date=June 29, 2013 |last=Rustin |first=Susanna |title=Rebecca Solnit: a life in writing |newspaper=The Guardian}} In 1966, her family moved to Novato, California, where she grew up. "I was a battered little kid. I grew up in a really violent house where everything feminine and female and my gender was hated", she has said of her childhood.{{cite news |url=https://www.rookiemag.com/2014/09/why-cant-i-be-you-rebecca-solnit/2/ |date=September 4, 2014 |last=Donohue |first=Caitlin |title=Why Can't I Be You: Rebecca Solnit |newspaper=Rookie}} 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 General Educational Development tests.

Thereafter she enrolled in junior college.{{where|date=January 2025}} When she was 17, she went to study in Paris.{{where|date=January 2025}} She returned to California to finish her college education at San Francisco State University.{{cite news |last=Benson |first=Heidi |date=June 13, 2004 |title=Move Over, Joan Didion / Make room for Rebecca Solnit, California's newest cultural historian |url=https://www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/Move-Over-Joan-Didion-Make-room-for-Rebecca-2713901.php |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle}}{{Cite web|title=Award-winning authors, activists and scientists among SF State Alumni Hall of Fame inductees |date=October 5, 2018 |url=https://news.sfsu.edu/archive/news-story/award-winning-authors-activists-and-scientists-among-sf-state-alumni-hall-fame-inductees.html |website=SF State News}} She then received a master's degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984{{cite web |url=http://ls.berkeley.edu/?q=alumni/meet-our-alumni |title=Meet Our Alumni: College of Letters & Science |publisher=Regents of the University of California |year=2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100610142323/http://ls.berkeley.edu/?q=alumni%2Fmeet-our-alumni |archive-date=June 10, 2010}} and has been an independent writer since 1988.{{cite web|title=Rebecca Solnit |url=https://tupress.org/author/rebecca-solnit/ |publisher=Trinity University Press}}

Career

=Activism=

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.{{cite magazine|last=Taylor |first=Astra |date=October 1, 2009 |title=Rebecca Solnit |url=https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2009/10/01/rebecca-solnit/ |magazine=BOMB Magazine}} She has discussed her interest in climate change and the work of 350.org and the Sierra Club, and in women's rights, especially violence against women.{{cite episode|title=San Francisco, the island within an island |url=https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/fz291rj2035 |credits=Interviewers: Leslie Chang and Michael Osborne |series=Generation Anthropocene |airdate=August 9, 2013}}

=Writing=

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications in print and online, including The Guardian newspaper and Harper's Magazine, where she is the first woman to regularly write the Easy Chair column founded in 1851. She was also a regular contributor to the political blog TomDispatch{{cite web|title=TomDispatch author page |url=https://tomdispatch.com/authors/rebeccasolnit/ |website=TomDispatch|date=23 December 2014 }} and is (as of 2018) a regular contributor to LitHub.{{cite web|title=LitHub author page|url=https://lithub.com/author/rebecca-solnit/|website=LitHub|publisher=Electric Literature}}

Solnit is the author of seventeen books as well as essays in numerous museum catalogs and anthologies. Her 2009 book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster began as an essay called "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."

In 2014, Haymarket Books published Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of short essays on feminism, including one on the phenomenon of "mansplaining". Men Explain Things to Me has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Italian, Slovak, Dutch, and Turkish.{{cite web|title=Selected Foreign Editions of Men Explain Things to Me |url=https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/26233826-men-explain-things-to-me |website=goodreads}} Solnit has been credited with paving the way for the coining of the word "mansplaining",{{cite news|last=Valenti|first=Jessica|title=Mansplaining, explained: 'Just ask an expert. Who is not a lady' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/06/mansplaining-explained-expert-women |newspaper=The Guardian |date=June 6, 2014|access-date=March 21, 2017}}{{cite magazine|title=The Essay That Launched the Term "Mansplaining" |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/118555/rebecca-solnits-men-explain-things-me-scourge-mansplaining |magazine=The New Republic |last=Lewis |first=Helen |date=June 4, 2014}} which has been used to refer to instances in which men "explain" things generally to women in a condescending or patronizing way, but Solnit did not use the term in her original essay.{{Cite news |url=https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/12/19/mansplaining-as-a-term |title=Do we need a different word for 'mansplaining'? |author=MPR News Staff |work=MPR News |date=December 19, 2016}} Solnit's book included illustrations from visual and performance artist Ana Teresa Fernández.{{cite web|title=Men Explain Things To Me |author=Rebecca Solnit |website=Haymarket Books |url=https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/691-men-explain-things-to-me}}

In 2019, Solnit rewrote a new version of Cinderella, also for Haymarket Books, called Cinderella Liberator.{{cite book | last1=Solnit | first1=Rebecca | last2=Rackham | first2=Arthur | title=Cinderella Liberator | publisher=Haymarket Books | publication-place=Chicago, IL | year=2019 | isbn=978-1-60846-596-5 | oclc=1057649455 }} In this feminist revision, Solnit reclaims Ella from the cinders and gives both the prince ("Prince Nevermind" in her version) and Ella new futures that involve thinking for themselves, acting out free will, starting businesses, and becoming friends, rather than dependent lovers. As Syreeta McFadden argued for NBC News, Cinderella has long been retold, changing with the times.{{Cite web|title=The Cinderella story has always evolved with the times. Rebecca Solnit's update is overdue. |last=McFadden |first=Syreeta |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cinderella-story-has-always-evolved-times-rebecca-solnit-s-update-ncna1002771 |work=NBC News |date=May 7, 2019}} Solnit's book uses Arthur Rackham's original silhouetted drawings of Cinderella.{{Cite web|title=Q & A with Rebecca Solnit |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/79853-q-a-with-rebecca-solnit.html |last=Kantor |first=Emma |date=April 23, 2019 |website=Publishers Weekly}}

=Reception=

Solnit has received two NEA fellowships for Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, a Lannan literary fellowship, and a 2004 Wired Rave Award for writing on the effects of technology on the arts and humanities.{{cite magazine |title=The Wired Rave Award |magazine=Wired |date=April 2004 |url=https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/rave.html?pg=3 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150702015022/https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/rave.html?pg=3 |archive-date=July 2, 2015}} In 2010, Utne Reader magazine named Solnit as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World".{{cite magazine|title=25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World |url=https://www.utne.com/politics/25-visionaries-changing-your-world-2010/ |magazine=Utne Reader |date=October 13, 2010}} Her 2013 novel The Faraway Nearby was shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award.{{cite web|title=National Book Critics Circle Awards − 2013 |url=https://www.bookcritics.org/past-awards/2013/ |website=bookcritics.org}}

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner called Solnit "the kind of rugged, off-road public intellectual America doesn't produce often enough....Solnit's writing, at its worst, can be dithering and self-serious, Joan Didion without the concision and laser-guided wit. At her best, however [...] she has a rare gift: the ability to turn the act of cognition, of arriving at a coherent point of view, into compelling moral drama."{{Cite news|title=Delighted by the Joy of Bad Things |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/books/21book.html |newspaper=The New York Times |last=Garner |first=Dwight |date=August 20, 2009 |url-access=subscription}}

For River of Shadows, Solnit was honored with the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism{{cite web|title=National Book Critics Circle Awards − 2003 |url=https://www.bookcritics.org/past-awards/2003/ |website=bookcritics.org}} and the 2004 Sally Hacker Prize from the Society for the History of Technology, which honors exceptional scholarship that reaches beyond the academy toward a broad audience.{{cite web|url=https://www.historyoftechnology.org/about-us/awards-prizes-and-grants/the-sally-hacker-prize/ |title=The Sally Hacker Prize − Recipients |publisher=Society for the History of Technology |date=2004}} Solnit was also awarded Harvard's Mark Lynton History Prize in 2004 for River of Shadows.{{cite web|title=J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project |url=https://nieman.harvard.edu/awards-2/j-anthony-lukas-prize-project/ |author=Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard |date=2004}} Solnit was awarded the 2015–16 Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography by the North American Cartographic Information Society.{{cite web|title=2015 Winner − Rebecca Solnit |url=https://nacis.org/awards/2015-winner-solnit/ |publisher=NACIS}} Solnit's book, Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises, won the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.{{Cite web|title=2018 Winners − Kirkus Prize |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/prize/2018/ |website=Kirkus Reviews}} She won the 2019 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction.{{cite web |url=https://windhamcampbell.org/festival/2019/recipients/solnit-rebecca |title=Rebecca Solnit − 2019 |publisher=Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes}} Solnit is the eleventh recipient of the Paul Engle Prize, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature.{{cite web | url=https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/paul-engle-day/#1655230881973-dc276dbb-7391 | title=Paul Engle Day and Prize }}

Solnit credits Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Ariel Dorfman, Elena Poniatowska, Gabriel García Márquez, Virginia Woolf,{{Cite web|title=Every City Should Have an Atlas: An Interview with Rebecca Solnit |url=https://www.terrain.org/2012/interviews/rebecca-solnit/ |date=March 22, 2012 |website=Terrain.org |last=Kelley |first=Chavawn}} and Henry David Thoreau{{Cite news|title=How Rebecca Solnit Became the Voice of the Resistance |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/t-magazine/entertainment/rebecca-solnit-writer-resistance.html |last=Gregory |first=Alice |date=August 8, 2017 |newspaper=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |url-access=subscription}} as writers who have influenced her work.

Bibliography

=Books=

{{cite book |year=1991 |title=Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KZqPQgAACAAJ |location=San Francisco |publisher=City Lights Bookstore |isbn=9780872862548}}
{{cite book |year=2014 |orig-year=1994 |title=Savage Dreams: A Journey Into the Landscape Wars of the American West |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rjdOAwAAQBAJ |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520957923 }}
{{cite book |year=2011 |orig-year=1997 |title=A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T7pE5XBBD40C |location=London |publisher=Verso |isbn=9781844677085 }}
{{cite book |year=2001 |orig-year=2000 |title=Wanderlust: A History of Walking |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderlusthistor00soln |url-access=registration|location=New York |publisher=Penguin |isbn=9780140286014 }}
{{cite book | last=Schwartzenberg | first=Susan (photographer) | title=Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4xTyAY3lfFIC | publisher=Verso | publication-place=London; New York | date=2000 | isbn=978-1-85984-794-7 }}
{{cite book |year=2003 |orig-year=2001 |title=As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dktt5F3uSOwC |location=Athens |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820324937 }}
{{cite book |year=2004 |orig-year=2004 |title=River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West |location=New York |publisher=Viking |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_of_Shadows |isbn=0142004103 }}
{{cite book |year=2016 |orig-year=2004 |title=Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2ptDrgEACAAJ&q=editions:RUwHhL8hS7IC |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=9781608465767 |edition= Updated}}
{{cite book |year=2005 |title=A Field Guide to Getting Lost |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgK5EdIQDL4C |location=New York |publisher=Viking |isbn=9781101118719 }}
{{cite book | last1=Klett | first1=Mark (photographer) | last2=Wolfe | first2=Byron (photographer) | title=Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers | publisher=Trinity University Press | publication-place=San Antonio, Tex | date=2005 | isbn=978-1-59534-016-0}}
{{cite book | last1=Klett | first1=Mark (photographer) | last2=Lundgren | first2=Michael (photographer) | last3=Fradkin | first3=Philip L. | interviewer-last1=Breuer | interviewer-first1=Karin | title=After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kW5k6gixiR0C |chapter=The Ruins of Memory |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kW5k6gixiR0C&pg=PA18 | publisher=Univ of California Press | publication-place=Berkeley | date=2006 | isbn=978-0-520-24556-3}}
{{cite book |year=2007 |title=Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics |url=https://archive.org/details/storminggatesofp00soln |url-access=registration|location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520256569 }}
{{cite book |editor1-last=Solnit |editor1-first=David |editor2-last=Solnit |editor2-first=Rebecca |year=2009 |title=The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s8jGPQAACAAJ |publisher=AK Press |isbn=9781904859635 }}
{{cite book |year=2010 |orig-year=2009 |title=A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ikky4CKuS_oC |location=New York |publisher=Penguin |isbn=9781101459010 }}
{{cite book | last=Solnit | first=Rebecca |others=Illustrations by Mona Caron | title=A California Bestiary |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yfjrp0dITI8C | publisher=Heyday Books | publication-place=Berkeley, Calif | date=2010 | isbn=978-1-59714-125-3 | oclc=419262718 }}
{{cite book |year=2010 |title=Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mbXWRgAACAAJ |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520262492 }}
{{cite book |editor-last=Dillon |editor-first=Brian |year=2011 |title=Ruins |series=Documents of Contemporary Art |volume=25 |issue=6 |location= London; Cambridge, MA |publisher=Whitechapel Gallery; MIT Press |chapter=The Ruins of Memory |isbn=9780854881932 }}
{{cite book |year=2013 |title=The Faraway Nearby |location=New York |publisher=Penguin |isbn=9781101622773 |title-link= The Faraway Nearby}}
{{cite book |year=2013 |title=Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520274044 }}
{{cite book |year=2014 |title=Men Explain Things to Me |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=9781608464579 |title-link= Men Explain Things to Me}}
{{cite book |year=2014 |title=The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aMJXngEACAAJ |location=San Antonio |publisher=Trinity University Press |isbn=9781595341983 }}
{{cite book |year=2016 |title=Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3xgQkAEACAAJ |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520285958 }}
{{cite book |year=2017 |title=The Mother of All Questions |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XIFYMQAACAAJ |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=9781608467402 }}
{{cite book |year=2018 |title=Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_SJwDwAAQBAJ |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=9781608469475 }}
{{cite book |title=Drowned River: The Death & Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3QxgAQAACAAJ|year=2018 |location=Santa Fe |publisher=Radius Books |isbn=9781942185253}}
{{cite book |title=Cinderella Liberator |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zGLwuQEACAAJ|date=2019 |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=9781608465965}}
{{cite book |title=Whose Story Is This? |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mQZtwQEACAAJ |date=2019 |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn= 9781642590180}}
{{cite book |title=Recollections of My Non-existence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YdupDwAAQBAJ|date=2020 |location=London |publisher=Granta |isbn=9781783785445}}
{{cite book |title=Orwell's Roses |date=2021 |location=New York |publisher=Viking |isbn=9780593083369}}
{{cite book |title=Waking Beauty |date=2022 |publisher=Haymarket Books |location=Chicago |isbn=9781642598339 |url=https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1924-waking-beauty#:~:text=Waking%20Beauty%20tells%20of%20Maya's,in%20a%20very%20different%20world.}}
{{cite book |editor1-last=Solnit |editor1-first=Rebecca |editor2-last=

Lutunatabua |editor2-first=Thelma Young |year=2023 |title=Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility |url=https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2000-not-too-late |publisher=Haymarket Books |isbn=9781642598971 }}

{{cite book |title=No Straight Road Takes You There |date=2025 |publisher=Haymarket Books |location=Chicago |isbn=9798888903636 |url=https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2517-no-straight-road-takes-you-there }}